To answer the original question, some people do things just for the challenge of it.
It’s a huge accomplishment to get accepted into a competitive university, and even if some middle class kid from Kansas doesn’t want to go to a school like Yale, he may still want to prove to himself and others that he worked hard enough in high school to have earned admissions there.
When I see things like this I’m either happy for the kid or at worst don’t consider it enough of my business to care one way or the other.
I don’t consider it anything to judge someone over.