You are spot on and I think are doing a better job of capturing the thinking of most wealthy folks than the notion that all they care about is rankings. As a parent who will not be eligible for need based financial aid anywhere whose kid goes to a high priced quality independent high school and who also went to an Ivy himself, I can confirm that most of the parents I know think about it the way you’ve laid out and are not just obsessed with rankings. Do many of them start the process with an Ivy or bust mentality in 10th or early 11th grade? Sure. But what the “all the wealthy care about is rankings” crowd on here miss or forget, is that wealthy people also have the most expert guidance through this process. If in private school they often have excellent college counselors who both apprise them of the harsh reality of top ranked school admissions, and also highlight the value of less prestigious schools that would be excellent choices for their particular kid. If they are in public school, many of them pay for expensive private college advisors who do the same. Even some of the private school families layer a private college advisor on top. In short, most wealthy folks do not go through this process blind solely based on their amateur opinions of the process. They have quality experts at their disposal. Very few end the process thinking the only good school for their kid is one of the top ranked ones. And many of them figure out quickly that the top ranked schools are plainly out of reach for their kid unless they can donate a building this year. So, they learn the value of other options.
And, I will say that my own family’s experience is an example of this (though in fairness we were never Ivy or bust). It is the college counselor who brought an excellent lower ranked school that is a perfect fit for our D26 to our attention. It is now tied as her top choice school and we all prefer it to most higher ranked schools for our daughter.
Most truly wealthy people make very few major decisions based on someone else’s generic ranking of that thing. Their kids are almost never the ones applying to all 8 Ivys, and most of them think that is foolish. They understand the value of getting and relying on personalized expertise and/or educating themselves about major decisions.