I'm afraid just about nothing in the quote above is true, especially what I put in bold. The agencies will certainly tell you what the process is, but they absolutely will not tell you what to expect in terms of odds or how long you will need to go through the process.

Think about that for a half a minute. Could you imagine the trouble that civil servants at state agencies would create for themselves and for their agency, if they went around quoting odds and predicting timeframes. No employee at an agency is going to touch such questions with a ten foot pole.

If you want someone to give you feedback on your odds, there is one way you can get that . . . and only one way. Call a law firm. If they offer to represent you, it means they think you have about an 85% chance of getting approved. If they don't want to represent you, then that means they don't think you've got a great chance of getting approved.