When I collected my mail from while I was out of town, I got two of the three contest results I'd been waiting for (the Molly, where I made the semis but fell a few points short of finaling, and the Maggie, which doesn't give out scores--all the judges are published authors who are supposed to give you a detailed critique, but the rankings are between them and the contest coordinator).
For one of my Maggie judges, "detailed critique" meant congratulating me on a great job, telling me she loved my story conflicts in my synopsis, and excising a stray comma or two and suggesting I stop using scene breaks when I switch POV. Which I suppose is fine if she doesn't think I need anything beyond those cosmetic changes, but they're supposed to give at least a page, and I wouldn't have minded an essay on why the story is wonderful as-is! The other loved my description and characterization, and said so at length, but said my synopsis needed work and didn't think my conflict was strong enough. I'm not sweating that one, because I've already rewritten the synopsis based on previous contest feedback, including describing the conflict a little better. But I've concluded some readers just aren't going to get the class conflict and there's nothing I can do about it except grit my teeth about how much more accurate and less melodramatic it is than making them from enemy families or using some stupid misunderstanding.
My Molly feedback was more detailed and varied. Three of my four judges thought I needed to tighten the pacing a bit, though they had different suggestions for how to do it. I lucked into a fellow Peninsular War buff and a French & Indian War reenactor, both of whom loved the military context and praised my research while raising minor research questions (in one case I just need to be more clear, in the other I think she's right for enlisted men's wives, while I'm right for officers' ladies, but it wouldn't hurt to confirm). Nice to know I'm pleasing the core of my target audience.
By and large, all six of them liked it, and most of them gave useful suggestions and feedback. I've become more philosophical about not finaling in these things. They're useful if you get good feedback. Finaling is gravy. I don't have to win a writing contest to be good enough to be published.
That said, I think I've gotten all the use I can get out of contesting with the WIP (for the first chapter, anyway--I may still enter a synopsis contest or one for a specific scene like a first kiss or sex scene). I'll enter the Golden Heart with it, since that's the one that really gets you somewhere, but I'll trust to my querying and pitching skills to get it in front of agents and editors.