<p>You are referring to the revealed preference study which is not about admission but about choice by students who are admitted to multiple schools.
<a href=“http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf[/url]”>http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf</a></p>
<p>The scenario you describe is also called the Tufts syndrome. The schools most likely to practice this are schools like Tufts which resent being treated as safeties by applicants to HYP and who suspect that if an applicant is admitted to H, Y or P, s/he will turn down Tufts. The study did suggest that Princeton, which has a somewhat lower yield than H and Y, practices “strategic admission” (pp. 4-9) in order to boost its matriculation rate; as a result, applicants to Princeton who are in the 93-98 percentile have a somewhat lower chance of being admitted than those at the 90-94 percentile and at the 99 percentile. The comparison is with Harvard and MIT. </p>
<p>I don’t know that expressing more love to H, Y or M would make a difference. I do know that expressing commitment to P via ED raises one’s chances of admission.</p>