ulimit settings in /etc/security/limits.conf not seen by users

Oracle Linux 6.6 Goal: user jboss_app should be able to run up to 16384 processes

We increased max user processes because a user was running out of processes. Current contents of limits.conf:

#<domain>      <type>  <item>         <value>
#

#*               soft    core            0
#*               hard    rss             10000
#@student        hard    nproc           20
#@faculty        soft    nproc           20
#@faculty        hard    nproc           50
#ftp             hard    nproc           0
#@student        -       maxlogins       4

*   soft   memlock    8388608
*   hard   memlock    8388608
*   soft   nofile    16384
*   hard   nofile    16384 
*   soft    nproc    16384
*   hard    nproc    16384
# End of file

When we log in as jboss_app, and run ulimit -a, we only see 1024 processes. allowed.

[jboss_app@tstjboss05 ~]$ ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 0
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 386260
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 8388608
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 16384
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 1024
virtual memory          (kbytes, -v) unlimited
file locks                      (-x) unlimited

What is limiting the jboss_app user to 1024 processes after the global configuration was raised to 16384?

Dave