There used to be a site where people posted and compared their actual rejection letters from different magazines but I can't find it now. Does anyone know the name of that site, if it's still around? That would give a better indication of if what you received is that magazine's standard form rejection or not.
Anyway, in my experience, you really need to know how that particular magazine typically does their rejection letters to know if that is their standard form rejection or a bit of extra interest.
And then, "personal" rejection may or may not mean anything, anyway. Some magazines give everyone the same form letter, regardless of how much they liked the story. Others send personal rejections for each submission. And many others phrase all of their rejection letters in an encouraging, nice way that writers often interpret as having special meaning that is really not there. This may (or may not) include inviting you to submit more stories in the future. And then of course everyone is "invited" to submit more stories in the future anyway, so...
Also, even if your story did make it to the second round, to know if that meant much, you'd have to have some idea what "second round" meant to that publication. It might mean your story was very close and was only passed over because some literary giant sent in a story that knocked yours out of the running. Or just that a volunteer briefly screens submissions and passes them all along to the "second round" if they're not written in crayon or the wrong genre entirely.
Acceptance rates and percentages of "personal rejections" for that magazine on duotrope or submission grinder might give you a bit of context, at least. Then again, when I edited a small litmag, I don't think we gave any personalized rejections, yet a significant percentage reported that they'd received one. I guess they took us writing in the name of their story in the rejection as "personal," I don't know.
Or you could just think in terms of "rejection" or "acceptance" and not bother with it.
