Rejections (by which I mean - "we are not putting this on our store") are an imaginary issue. They are so few and far between that you'd be hard pressed to find a developer who had had an app rejected. Also in my experience the "app store gatekeepers" have been far from capricious and in fact rather sensible. And unlike less than a year ago, now Apple are proactive in communicating with developers - detailed information what issues they've found (including things like screenshots and even suggestions how the issue can be solved), follow up ID, contact information (including phone) of a person that can answer any further questions you might have, etc.

In short, if you are reasonable (e.g. not trying to sneak in a porn app or an app that obviously violates Apple's terms) you are practically guaranteed that you'll get your app in the store. And if you are not reasonable being big or close to Apple will likely not help you much.

(By the way, I cannot come up with a single case in which ngmoco might seem to have bypassed the approval process. Do they have a tits app in the store or something?)