I think I heard several veterans of Medium say that your chance for curation is tenfold when you’re part of a publication. Some even claim that curators prefer pub-signed articles over individual ones.

Another thing that might give you an insight (I myself don’t understand the how and why), I got a poem published in P.S. I Love You. It was scheduled and released on time, automatically. I received a message that it has been curated even before I got notice of the automated release. It had no views and no claps, nothing, but got immediately picked.

Maybe that tells you something?