I've been out of the credit card app game for the past 2 years because I was looking for a home, and am happy to say that I just closed 3 days ago. After a long wait, I'm looking to apply for 3 cards for now-- Chase Ink Plus 70K (in-branch), USB Club Carlson Business, AMEX Old Blue Cash. Currently, I have 3 Chase personal cards, 1 Chase business (Ink Bold), 2 AMEX, 3 Citi, 1 Capital One cards.

I've read stories about how strict US Bank is about approvals for the Club Carlson card due to too many inquiries, so I figured I would apply for that one first. I anticipated an approval due to high FICO (Experian 795), pretty high income (>$300K), and I could use my physician status as a business, as I did with Ink Bold 2 years ago. Unfortunately, US Bank now has me under review". I called the reconsideration line and the rep said everything looked good, but they had to do a formal review to confirm identity or whatever. He couldn't approve me over the phone.

At that point, I wasn't sure if I should've gone ahead and applied for the Ink Plus and AMEX cards, or waited to hear from US Bank first. I chose to wait. I've been told that it's best to apply for multiple cards on the same day because banks can't see same-day inquiries from other banks, but I don't know how true that is. I was worried that if I applied for the Chase and AMEX, I would almost certainly get declined for the USB CC card as they reviewed my file and found 2 apps immediately after I applied for their card. On the other hand, if I wait for USB to complete their review and then apply for Chase and AMEX 1 week later, will they be more likely to decline me due to a recent inquiry?

What would you have done?