If you are selected as a QB finalist, you can rank colleges (up to 12, I believe) in order of your preference. You’ll be matched with ONE college you rank highest that also chooses you. It could be your #1 college, your #12 college, or it could be none of the 12 you ranked. Let’s say you rank in this order:
Chicago
Princeton
Hamilton
Haverford
Grinnell
Emory
Davidson
WashU
Macalaster
Northwestern
Columbia
Yale
If Chicago chooses you as a match, congrats—you’ve matched with your top-ranked school, and you’re going to Chicago. If Chicago says no to your application, but Princeton chooses you, you’re going to Princeton. If Princeton doesn’t choose you, but Hamilton does, then you are going to Hamilton. And so on, down the list. If none of your ranked colleges chooses you, you have not matched for the guaranteed four-year full scholarship, but you can still apply regular decision as a QB scholar to any of these schools and other QB schools.
Bottom line: Through QB, you get TWELVE chances at an ED application. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to play the selection-odds game. If you like UChicago the most, rank it first. Nothing to lose. You won’t lose your chance at other “less selective”* schools because you’ll still have those schools on your list!
*I put that in quotes because 1-these are all highly selective schools, and 2-we can’t apply the general selectivity rate to QB because we don’t know if its the same.