OK - a few things:
Pre Law = any major, great test taker, strong GPA, and at top schools today, work experience
Pre MBA = any major, great test taker in most cases, decent GPA, and at least two - but preferably 3-5 years work experience.
So it really makes little sense to be thinking about an MBA - at this point For both law and business, the where you go to school will matter little. Harvard, for example, has students from 147 colleges this year and last year nearly 175 - schools like Cal State LA, U of Arkansas, Fairleigh Dickinson, Auburn, Drake, and tons and tons of what you’d deem 2nd and 3rd tier schools. Yale similar…schools like Quinnipiac and many more that are not elite.
Yes, they’ll have kids from the top schools in droves - but likely for the same reason they got into top schools to begin with - they’re top students…but the top top schools are showing older kids into law school.
Business - the work experience is almost most critical. In fact, kids that go straight through typically don’t go to great schools…can’t get in. But if you do go straight through - at my old company, we gave a $5K salary bump and before I left they were talking about reducing that… The reason - a student without work experience doesn’t have life experiences to add to the discussion, don’t have the perspective, etc. At other schools, the average salary undergrad to graduate doubles and more…but having a finance undergrad and then MBA doesn’t necessarily add as much educationally…as say History or even Econ to MBA…it’s too similar.
Now your question can be answered in regards to who provides merit - but you need to determine the UW GPA - because different schools report weighted GPAs differently. So take the students grades - 4 for an A, 3 for a B - and figure the unweighted.
If we assume it’s above a 3.5, those you’ll want to look at schools like, - depending on budget, Alabama, UAH, Ole Miss, Ms State, UTK, Arkansas, Kentucky, Truman State, Louisville, some regionals, Miami Ohio, U of South Carolina, U of Arizona, ASU, W Carolina, the Kansas schools, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Mizzou, SUNY, the Dakotas and much more. and for privates - U Denver, U Miami, some LACs ranked 50 or below, etc.
I can’t tell you who has a 40-60% acceptance rate but I would ask why it would even matter? It wouldn’t.
What you need is a budget - not to worry about merit. For example, W Carolina is $20K all in full cost. So if a school is $60K and gives you $20K merit, it’s double the cost of W Carolina for OOS.
Having multiple kids may or may not help…but bottom line - that’ll be up to the private schools…for what it’s worth, I had two kids at once and it didn’t help.
Any major (management, finance or…art history or journalism or sociology)…whatever interests the student is either pre-law or pre MBA which is really just a direction and potential level of advising.
And you need your unweighted GPA (not weighted) so we can have an apples to apples - and ultimately you’ll need a budget vs. who gives what merit…etc. Merit does not give you a total cost and we need to know the total cost you want to hit. With the PSAT, he’s likely not Natl Merit…but if he were, you could be free full ride. Assuming the SAT is close to as strong and the GPA is over 3.5, you can be as low as $20K full pay and certainly have many options under $40K - including some privates.
You also need to find out - what type of school interests the student - small, medium, large…weather, greek, sports, etc…because cheap is great but kids have to live day after day after day for four years in the environment they select.
Hope that helps.
PS - until you have a budget, there’s no reason to have a list…but another thing to look at - UNC for example - impossible (ok, not impossible but very hard) to get in OOS and their b school is not direct admission…so you apply for it Junior year. If they 100% want business, you want a direct admit…not to have to apply again in two years.
PPS - I just saw $25-30K - so Bama, UAH , Miss State, Ole Miss, potentially FSU, Truman State for small, maybe a W Carolina, Millersville, CNU or Salisbury, some SUNY, some directional. There might be some others - in the middle of the country - like Iowa State, a UNLV…but for big school, likely heading South.
It’s not going to be your Big 10 schools like UIUC, Michigan/Michigan State, Pitt, Penn State, UNC…dont’ even go there.
Privates - maybe York College of PA or you’ll need big need.