It may be unethical, but Rice definitely asks this question and then also has the student sign at the end that all of the information in the application is truthful. This makes the analysis more complicated for us since my son knows most of his list (at least with respect to his reach schools). I think they’re clearly fishing for information regarding whether they are being used as a backup option. My son will be listing all of his schools, several of which are what I would call equivalent highly-selective schools (e.g., Hopkins, Northwestern). Who knows what they’ll do with that information, but I was pretty ticked when I saw the question. If I didn’t think that the school would be a really good fit for my kid, I’d tell him not to apply on general principle.
Also keep in mind that there used to be an issue with the FAFSA revealing the names of schools also being given access to the form – they’ve talked about fixing this ridiculous breach of privacy, but I don’t know that they actually did it. Saying “undecided” if you apply on the early side would be much safer than providing a partial list and having them see a different list elsewhere.