<p>Do they prefer to see you've applied to multiples so they feel that they have to "fight" for you and offer you more, or do they prefer if they are the only college you have selected and put down as your first choice, so if you're accepted, they can pretty much tell you'll definitely attend?</p>
<p>One option discussed in a thread a while back was to put “undecided” and/or your state’s flagship university.</p>
<p>I noticed that the SUNY Geneseo supplement asks this. They gave two lines. I think that’s a lot of space…</p>
<p>If it’s online and actually has limited number of characters, I’ve heard of someone who put down something like “I’m applying to other colleges that share college’s X commitment to x, y, and y including” so that it cuts off just before you start listing the other colleges. They can find out what all college you’re applying to through financial aid so it really annoyed this family.</p>
<p>Seems like they are trying to figure out if you are using them as a safety so that they can reject or waitlist you on that basis to keep their yield up (see “level of interest” as an admissions criterion in the school’s common data set section C7).</p>
<p>Questions like this are unethical. You deserve to be judged based on your app, not on the adcom’s guessing at why you might be applying to some other schools. So feel NO obligation to give your complete list, or even an accurate list. Use the question to your advantage. (1) Look up some of their close competitors and list 2 of them, along with a safety since everyone expects to see this. (2) Be sure to list a slightly more desireable school.</p>
<p>Here are the reasons. For (1), some schools are believed to reject you if they think you’ll get into more prestigious schools that you’ve applied to in order to keep their yield up. Google “tufts syndrome” for more info, although Tufts denies they do it these days. For (2), this is for financial aid. If they recognize they’re the most prestigious school on your list, they may very well reason that you’ll dig a little deeper in your pocket to attend and may give you a downgraded FA package. By contrast, if they think you’ll get into their slightly better ranked competitor they may try to sway you with a better FA package.</p>