It is worth remembering that the end of the day, all colleges want to admit enough qualified students so that they fill their beds after taking yield into account.
Importantly, the number of highly qualified students has not changed much in the last few years. What has changed is the number of applications for the top 50-100 colleges. Given the same number of highly qualified students and beds, the increase in applications means that for most colleges, the yield goes down. Low yield is bad for colleges as they find it hard to predict who will actually attend. The colleges now put more emphasis on yield protection, admitting not just the most qualified students, but the qualified students that they perceive will actually attend.
This unpredictability creates worry, as you wonder if it will be you or your child that gets “yield protected” out of the schools they would otherwise be admitted to if college admissions was more rational. I get that.
But the way to minimize the chance of that happening is to have a good set of match and safety schools AND give those apps as much or more attention to those apps than to the reach schools. A high quality application will result in more perceived interest and higher likelihood of admission. In my children’s case, after they completed each reach app, I had them complete an app for a match and a safety with the same care.
ETA: One other thing is that my children completed all their apps before hearing from their early schools. One got into her first choice early and was done, so the remaining apps were “wasted effort” but she was so happy it didn’t bother her. The other didn’t get into first choice early, and having those apps done with care well ahead of time paid off immensely in terms of higher quality and reduced stress the last two weeks of December.