[tptacek]

That makes sense.

But then all else equal: if you're a possible YC pick-up at the margins of being accepted, so they have a choice of accepting you or someone with similar prospects but without the baggage, it would be irrational of them to pick you up.

It gets fuzzier the less marginal you are relative to all the other companies that want to be in the next YC batch, of course.

[rachellaw]

Yes, that's what we thought as well when we got rejected. With such a large group of applicants, the core reason is probably "you're on the wrong side of bell curve"

At the same time I wish they were more transparent. Dropping bits and pieces in no particular order like "don't do a previous accelerator" or "get a recommendation from another alum" makes their process seem irrational.