Thanks to WA2ONH,
and there are several desirable call signs available.
QUESTION
Do the listings they provide pretty much guarantee me getting one of the signs I want.
Or, does the FCC make the ultimate decision?
That is, if I enter a list of desired calls.
Have you bought any LOTTERY Tickets lately? The FCC randomly picks the one to award the "desired" Callsign from the total of X-number of Hams who applied for it.
Like life in general, nothing is guaranteed to you. Good Luck.
Yes, it's a lottery, but it's not exactly what you implied.
On every processing day, FCC randomly (yes, a lottery) selects an
application and processes it to completion. It assigns the first callsign on that application's preference list that is available--number 1 if it's available, or number 25 if the previous 24 are unavailable for any reason (date, license class, invalid, etc). If none are available, then the application is dismissed.
Then the FCC randomly selects an application from all that are left for that day, and does the same thing. And then again, and again, until all applications from that day are processed to completion.
If every application has only one requested callsign, then this is mathematically equivalent to a lottery among all who applied for it. But since there are second choices and third choices and so on, it's really much more complex, because a single application is in multiple lotteries based on its preference list. So it's easier to describe as a lottery among all applications, regardless of callsign selected.