<p>This could be the so-called Tufts syndrome - schools rejecting candidates who they know aren’t going to attend anyway. </p>
<p>Nor is this necessarily a bad thing. Think of it from the schools’ point of view. If a school has a strong reason to believe that you’re going to go somewhere else, then there’s no reason for that school to keep a seat open for you. The school should instead offer that seat to somebody who has a higher probability of actually taking it. Instead of the school offering you the seat and keeping it open for you, only for you to turn down the seat to go elsewhere as the school already thought you were going to do, might as well short-circuit the process by simply not offerning you the seat in the first place. Honestly, what does it matter - you weren’t going to take the seat anyway.</p>
<p>The only people that I think this ‘hurts’ is those people who really would attend a particular school even if they have the stats to attend a far better one. In that case, it’s a matter of demonstrating your personal commitment to the school - you have to really show that you really are interested in the school and are not just using it as a safety, which no school wants to be.</p>