Harvard offers soft support, Princeton doesn’t. Penn has a solid transfer program, Princeton does not. Because one school does something one way, it does not mean the other does too.
Also, accepting a deferred student ahead of the timeline, even if they actually did so, is not reversing a denial. If someone gets rejected, that is it that year.
Thats the thing. You will have great results too, but its on you to embrace where the chips fall and roll with it. I worry that you have too many expectations/rationalizations that wont olay out. Princeton, as most schools, do not read applications in such a binary way. From our school (also a prep school) most of the kids accepted over the last handful of years were in AB calc, despite the fact that plenty of kids are in BC or even Multi.
This is not something you will be able to rationalize. You have to decide if you “need to know” or prefers to hop on some other train and surrender yourself to that experience. But you need to be prepared for things going side ways. They do sometimes. Its not the end of the world, but its a lot better if you have some choice and control over what that alternate path is so you need to play that part of the game now too.