UNC-Asheville and UNC-Wilmington are both great public universities! I would not take a gap year (or delay high school graduation!) if those were my options.
You can still attend a top law school with a BA from either of those schools.
Well, think about it this way. Unless you are accepted off the wait list at some of your other schools, you will probably be headed to UNC-A or UNCW…right? And you love academics? There are lots of reasons why a student might attend a small public regional university. Two of the most intellectual people I know attended a small regional SUNY (New Paltz, if you’re wondering), and through chatting with them they revealed a thriving intellectually, socially active culture at the college that was largely student-driven and embraced forums, discussions, lectures, etc. Conversely, I know a lot of extremely pre-professional people with not much interest in academics for their own sake who went to top colleges.
UNCW admits above-average students. A lot of students mistakenly correlate acceptance rate with the competitiveness of the student body. But UNCW’s students scored on average between 1190 and 1320 on the new SAT, and nearly two-thirds were in the top quarter of their high school graduating class. 83% had a 3.75 or higher in high school. No, they’re not the astronomically high values of an elite LAC or Ivy League, but the thing is the ridiculous stats at those schools give students a skewed vision of what “great” truly is. Between 1190 and 1320 means these students are in the 80th to the 93rd percentile. These are the students who scored in the top 20% of all SAT test-takers across the nation and have top grades and class rank to boot. At UNCA on average students scored between an 1100 and a 1300 on their SAT, which puts students in the 67th to the 90th percentile. Also students who are above-average in the large scheme of things.
Yes, contact the schools at which you are wait listed, reiterate your interest, and see what happens. But you have two excellent choices already on the table.