One more bad data point. About a week ago, our 25 year old daughter applied for a MC and AMEX. She had canceled her two Citi cards a few months ago because the annual fee was coming up. In the meantime, she has been using other cards.

Today in the mail came 2 rejections. Here credit is very good. Absolutely nothing bad in her history so there was no reason to reject other than it needs to be A LONG time before you will get another sign up bonus.