It does not play a major role, but do remember that schools are concerned about their yield. You want to put schools that are competitive with the one you are applying to, but not a bunch of schools that are of a "higher caliber" than the one you are applying to. Target 3 other schools.

PrecisionEssay wrote:I always recommend presenting the school you are actually applying to as the best school. Meaning if you apply to Harvard and Duke, don't tell Duke you applied to Harvard, because they will know that if you get in you are gonna go to Harvard... Now it's not SUPPOSED to influence anybody's decision, but why take chances?

So in theory, if you were only applying to Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, then what would you put down as your other schools?

At any rate, I put down my two safety schools as my "other schools" for every other school that I applied to.

Guess it's too late for me.

I realized why they were asking this (worries about admit rate and maybe to a lesser degree how much time you've had to do the app based on the # of apps you did, to see if you have a theme across schools or if you're just applying to top 5, etc.)

But I was just completely honest in my answer. I thought everybody had to deal with this issue since I thought (perhaps naively) that everybody would just state the truth. Now I'm probably one of the few who my safety schools look at and start to worry based on the other schools I've applied to. Oh well.

Anyway I can mitigate this in an interview?

Thanks Jon, yeah that's what I'm going to do, Haas was one I applied to which asked and I know they probably hate losing people to other top schools (who doesn't right?)

It's going to be the whole silicon valley and Haas tech entrepreneurship spin I'm going to have to give 'em. We'll see when (if) the time comes, not even invited yet (applied Jan round).