I stand humbly corrected.you need to remember that many NRD's/NTAG's held applications saying there were no SNA spots or there were limited spots overall, that reduced the pool of applicants, that also would lead to fewer people on this board applying. This of course means that the board had fewer people to pick from and more than likely lead to a few people getting lucky.
In a normal board without rumors and panic the main factor is the PFAR and FOFAR.