Having money enough to endow a chair, is the kind of money that can make a difference. But colleges only admit a handful of these every year. I think the number of people put on waitlists just to make the parents happy is tiny. If we want to talk about sample sizes of one, Harvard was happy to reject my niece, a female would be engineer, number three in a class of over 600, good scores, nice ECs both in and out of school (though I’d guess not quite at Harvard level of expectations.) Parents were miffed she wasn’t even waitlisted and haven’t donated since.
First off, I’m going to say congratulations for the admissions to the match school with good aid; and also congratulations of the safeties. I think this college process is very confusing and that LACs in particular have very quirky admissions. Since they are taking such a small number of students each year, they are looking for certain things to balance their class and sometimes, even with strong stats, you just end up getting those WL. It’s hard but try to love the school that loves you back and tell your D that there is some randomness in this process and she should try to not take it too personally.