Hard to say no to UCLA. Congrats!
Utah just added a bunch of new dorms and is trying to move away from their commuter college reputation. I’ve heard great things about WWU and Oregon State too. I still think my kid is most likely to land at a place like Skidmore, Whitman, or Macalester…but I want him to cast a wide net at the outset.
You won’t get much merit but if affordable Boulder is a top physics school.
My son is from California and applied almost exclusively to OOS flagships. He did put in an application for SLO as his only in-state option. He was looking for 1) great academics, 2) a high “happiness factor” (schools with high retention and/or rated highly for happiest students, 3) access to outdoor recreation, 4) a good college town, 5) study abroad opportunities, 6) a not overly political student body, and 7) good food, lol.
He ended up applying to Auburn, Clemson, University of Alabama, UGA, UNH, Penn State, Virginia Tech, SMU and University of Denver
Some clues here, perhaps?
https://www.aau.edu/who-we-are
“Our member universities earn the majority of competitively awarded federal funding for research that improves public health, seeks to address national challenges, and contributes significantly to our economic strength, while educating and training tomorrow’s visionary leaders and innovators.”
Oh yes! Definitely Boulder.
It’s good to cast a wide net. My D’s preferences changed so much from the time she made her list to the end of senior year. I wanted a LAC for her—and she liked a few of them (UCLA, Smith and Kenyon were her top 3 in the end). But the big energy, opportunity and gorgeous campus at UCLA won her over.
One thing I learned about LACs during this process is that the vibe matters, big time. My D was accepted at Macalester with 23k in merit, so we flew out there to visit it and Kenyon (15k merit). Wow, she did not like Macalester. What seemed amazing for her on the website did not land at all when she got there. There are many reasons she didn’t like it—most were particular to her visit and personal preferences (though we both found the cafeteria food inedible)—but she couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Big publics may have their drawbacks, but one thing she has found for certain at UCLA is that there’s no shortage of people, clubs, opportunities, for her to explore. I was romanced by the tiny LACs but she’s loving her big, fun school. (And the food is amazing)
To make your point, you bring up Apple, JPL and NASA. You are arguing against selective institutions buy bringing up selective institutions. You made my point for me. Thank you.
It’s not about the total numbers. It’s about leadership and positions of utmost importance.
The undergraduate schools of the CEO of Apple, director of JPL, and director of NASA were Auburn, Arizona State, and Yale.
What?
I proved your point by listing several selective EMPLOYERS that employ a lot of people from less selective SCHOOLS?
I’d say that’s the opposite of your point.
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No, I agree financial accessibility is very uneven, and that is very much worth criticism.
This thread’s original topic is important and will be helpful to many people. Let’s not turn this into yet another “are elite schools worth it?” discussion please.
Forgoing the term “elite,” “worth it?” was a major part of the OP’s question.
Up thread, it was posited that selectivity was a metric that would indeed make it so, to which I disagreed and offered evidence.
That’s where I’ll choose to leave it.
Apologies, bad grammar strikes again! I meant to say that Minnesota, in Minneapolis, was in a better situation than Iowa, which is two hours from the closest large city (which is Des Moines, no Minneapolis), and four hours from Chicago. Didn’t mean that Minnesota was that distance from those cities, but rather that Iowa was! 
Aha, interesting. I think I assumed that most flagships were more old/established than that.
A lot of “flagship” universities date to the 1860s or 1870s because of the 1862 Land Grant Act. Western flagships might be later, of course, although some (like Cal) were founded in that era.
Some Eastern flagships conversely were founded earlier, and some were eventually designated as land grant universities, and other states continued supporting those flagships in other ways while creating new land grant universities. So, for example, what became the University of Michigan was founded earlier, and the state created Michigan State as a land grant university (actually with a land grant that proceeded the 1862 Act–it was a model for that act). Same with Indiana (not land grant) and Purdue (created as a land grant). NC State, Clemson, Auburn, Virginia Tech, and TAMU are other examples like that.
New York is an interesting case because Cornell (1865) is their land grant university. To this day it has a complex relationship with the state.
What became MIT (1861) is a similar case because it is one of Massachusetts’s land grant universities, but they also created what became UMass Amherst (1863) as another land grant university.
Connecticut is yet another interesting case. Originally their land grant went to Sheffield Scientific School at Yale. But then in 1893 they decided to create what became UConn instead (and paid off Yale, incidentally).
Similarly, Brown was originally Rhode Island’s land grant designee, but after a lot of lawsuits and a settlement it was moved to a reorganized institution that became the University of Rhode Island.
Delaware (under a variety of names) existed long before it became a land grant university. It had an up and down relationship with the state–for a while it was supported by a lottery, then not. It suspended operations right before the Civil War, then reopened as a land grant university in 1870. It remains privately-governed despite the state assistance.
Rutgers is also very old, and eventually became a land grant.
Colleges like William & Mary and Pitt are also very old, and only later became state-affiliated, but not land grant. Of course some people would not call them flagships (versus UVA and Penn State), but they are still very well regarded.
Anyway, point is–it is very complicated. The origin stories of flagships are highly variable, and it often reflects differences in region, era, state politics, and so on.
If he has any interest whatsoever in engineering, it’s best to start in engineering. It’s much easier to switch out of engineering than it is to switch in. That will narrow his options down to about 450 schools, most of them not SLACs.
If that’s not his thing, then he really has a plethora to choose from.
I realize that you asked about flagships, but you’ve mentioned SLACs too. Has he visited any schools? Typically, but not always, students find an affinity with either larger or smaller schools, but not both. That’s not always the case. It certainly wasn’t for our son who applied to schools as small as 5000 and as large as 32,000.
If he can tour say UCLA, CSULB, and LMU or the Claremont Consortium if you’re near LA, or Cal and Santa Clara if your in the Bay, that should give him some idea. It doesn’t matter if he’d be competitive. It’s about figuring out if a size “feels right.”
Big or small, there are all sorts of great options across the Midwest that aren’t necessarily on the radars of your average CC family where a student could get a great education and have a fun time.
Kansas and Iowa were the schools my classmates would leave Missouri for. Those who stayed at Mizzou though did fine. One of my fraternity brothers is a Fortune 500 President. My niece went to Iowa from Missouri and is in medical school now.
Grinnell, Kenyon, Denison, Berea, Mcalester and Beloit, to name but a few, are all worth a look.
So, yes, there are LOTS of large, medium and small schools that are semi off the radar, many where merit money will be generous, that could be candidates. It’s really a matter of narrowing the focus.
Our son left Oregon for a OOS public. He wanted a strong engineering program, with small classes, that started in major, featured early application of theory and was sunny. He chose Cal Poly (BS/MS ME). Oregon State at the time was none of those things. One of his HS classmates attended OSU, and then did his MS at MIT. They both have very successful careers.
That’s a long way of saying that an individual’s success is largely in their hands and not determined by the name on the undergraduate paper.
Best of luck. You’re asking great questions.
As as side note, Oregon State, Penn State and Hawaii, are the only universities to hold all four grant designations, Land, Sea, Space and Sun.
Did the “Sun grant” improve the weather?
Ha! How Corvallis ended up with that is beyond me. 
Deleted. Point already made.