Originally Posted by indigo
Relying on my memory because I cannot find the study at the moment... a few years ago some research indicated that students who applied to Ivies as their "reach" schools fared better overall in the admissions game than those who did not.
Maybe the study On the Payoff to Attending an Elite College by Dale and Krueger, which found that "the average SAT score of the schools students applied to but did not attend is a much stronger predictor of students' subsequent income than the average SAT score of the school students actually attended."