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Those students who applied to both Harvard and ___ were probably applying to ____ as a backup. My son had Ivy league stats but didn’t WANT to go there, so never applied - most schools he applied to were smaller. In his case, he applied to the larger schools as backups to his favorite. As above, he never will know if he could have been a contender. However, he did get accepted to a more famous (and slightly cheaper) school than the one he ended up attending. He chose for class size, lecture quality, personal attention, and no competition from grad students for research - over - prestige and better-funded research, most other things being essentially equal.</p>