Applied for the Sears card in-store and got insta approved for $2.5k CL.Not sure if it is the MC, will have to wait as the store attendant didn't seem to know either. By this time I was very confident that I could finally get a Home Depot card and went ahead and applied... denied. I don't know what metric they use, but Sears is citi as well and they just approved me a few minutes before applying for HD. This is the third time that HD denies me this year (march, july, now).

Anyways I'm happy with what I got today and thankful for the advice, I'll be sure to go to 'farm mode' now and manage these accounts and hopefully they grow with me.

EDIT: Today checked CreditKarma and the 3 inquiries have already posted! The cards haven't posted yet.