@“Erin’s Dad” By that logic, why would you even need reaches if you have a perfect safety?
In our experience, preference was on a continuum, so even if our S tried to find a couple safeties he was happy with that didn’t mean there were not schools that were more selective that he wanted to attend more. Some of those we called reaches, some of them matches, just depending on how far beyond of his stats (relative to his school’s past performance) he was. Settling on a couple (just in case) safeties was very important, but he put the most focus on matches because those were the schools he still had a decent shot at getting into that he preferred over his safeties.