All selective schools care a LOT about enrollment per admit offer, otherwise known as “yield.”
If a school extensively uses ED, SCEA or REA, they know the kids applying that way are highly interested and likely to enroll. The ultimate demonstration of interest, of course, is a binding ED application. So all those other touch points matter much less. Among the top 20-30, typically half the seats (or more) are filled through the high yielding restrictive early round.
For selective schools that don’t use ED/SCEA/REA extensively, then they typically would track all of those things. Classic example of this is Tulane.
For years, Tulane mostly operated on unrestricted EA and RD. Accordingly, Tulane was a very popular back-up/safety application for kids shooting higher – say Vandy or Duke. Tulane would accept lots of those high stat kids but very few of them would end up enrolling. So what did Tulane do?
First, they put a HUGE emphasis on tracking demonstrated interest. Very high stat kids applying EA without having visited campus (or otherwise showing serious interest) would very often get deferred to RD. Once the kids showed some interest (like visiting campus in the spring after not getting into Duke or Vandy) the RD admit offer would be forthcoming. And Tulane was very transparent about how much they valued demonstrated interest.
Second, more recently Tulane took it further by adding ED in addition to EA and RD. The percentage of seats filled by ED at Tulane has gone from 0% to 25% in just the past few years.
Bottom line, schools love applicants that show them the love.