Honestly, as a former CT, I think its silly to keep the same application process nearly as it was 15 IRL years ago - just whink about that. Its bloated and a waste of time, and from what I've seen, in no way ensures roleplay quality - and I think it shouldn't. Let people who come here learn, I did it too. My english was insanely bad and I had to google every 10th word someone used, often I struggled to understand people's emotes.
I learned. In my opinion, of the sake of the player and the CT handling applications they should simply be an "idiot filter":
CT should not make it process. Don't check dozens of things. If they are smart enough to actually write smth up, even if it breaks lore, accept them. They'll be corrected ingame by other players. Its barely any effort.
BUT. We lose a lot of players due the long wait, sometimes over a week!
Remove pending. It's an extra loop that wastes times of CT, for literally no benefit. In doubt, just accept them. We have such a massive playerbase that the roleplay quality will still be enforced top down onto the new players. And even for people like me, who struggled a lot... we also WANT to improve because we want to be part of everything.
So please, abandon this system that wastes your time and prevents many people from joining because they get discouraged with a silly bureaucratic system.