Yup. I've known at least four (all of them White) pre-med students who adopted much the same strategy as that, but with a twist. As undergraduates, they would not attend the most prestigious schools they could get into, but rather go to schools where they were all but certain to get straight A's. Later, they would successfully apply to the most prestigious med schools with perfect transcripts. That leads me to suspect that Blacks who go to schools were they are more likely to succeed will probably gain the benefit of having superior transcripts when they eventually apply for jobs.
I think your friends were really smart. They are taking advantage of a broken system that relies on GPA and MCAT scores as the only measure of academic ability rather than looking at the whole picture as they should in holistic admissions. It is the same for law schools with GPA & LSAT. It is a broken system because we all know that a perfect gpa from MIT in electrical engineering could be more academically demanding than a perfect GPA in history, sociology or political science at some other colleges. Yet these med and law school programs treat these colleges and majors as the same and we the consumer of medical care lose because of it. That said, I doubt any counselor advised your friends to do this.
On the other hand how would your friends have liked it if their counselors said they would not be recommended to the top universities, even if they wanted to apply there and could get in? Also, one has to remember that top universities may also have a lot of resources to help students engage in remedial work that normal universities may not have. I agree that one should not seek an extremely difficult school, but a little competition is not a bad thing to push one to work harder, esp. at schools where help is available.
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