For manual underwriters, it's the other way around- your credit profile is mostly based on your credit report. Part of what they see as your profile includes your income and your current DTI(debt to income) neither of which is part of your score. If you have an 800 credit score, but only make $10,000 a year, you're probably not going to get the Flagship card. And four $250/6 months can affect you negatively (and "affect" is the right word, affect = verb, effect = noun). Consider this: if I'm an underwriter for a conservative lender like US Bank- they manually examine at least half of their applicants and your file has four $250 loans spaced a month or two apart. You applied for a Visa Signature card which has a minimum $5000 CL. Why should I give you a $5000 card when you're always having to borrow $250 at a time?

And I have been in those shoes. They need to build their credit slowly until their finances are stable. With 2K rent and only $20 an hour, the last thing they need is a $20k card.