Dartmouth, Tufts, Columbia, JHU, Duke, Northwestern, WUSTL, are all reaches of course. You are competitive for admissions, but so are the vast majority of applicants at all of these schools.
Tufts currently costs about $95,000 per year (total cost of everything except not including transportation – which should be minimal with your coming from NH), and will probably be $100,000 by the time that you start there. The other schools on this reach list will not be very far behind. You could very well spent more than $400,000 by the time that they hand you a bachelor’s degree. Then of course there could be additional cost for a master’s degree, although PhD’s are usually fully funded (with a stipend which is only just barely enough to live on – a small amount of parent enhancement of the stipend might make living on a PhD stipend for 5 or 6 or 7 years a bit more tolerable).
I think that UVM is pretty much a safety. You are also very likely to get merit aid there, which will not make it cheap but will make it significantly less expensive than the full cost private schools. U.Conn and U.Mass seem very likely also. I think that merit is possible at these schools but am not sure. Rutgers and NC state might similarly be likely but I am not as familiar with applying to them as an out of state student.
I am not sure which USC you are referring to. The one in California might be another reach.
The rest of your schools look to me to be somewhere in the middle, but I would not be surprised if you get acceptances at one or more of them.
And I think that you will get research opportunities at any of these schools.
I think that this is a pretty good list as long as your parents are okay with spending something north of $400,000 for a bachelor’s plus another $250,000 or so for a master’s if this ends up being needed (guessing at future price increases).
By the way, we are somewhat familiar with applying for a PhD in a sub-field of biology. A master’s degree is not always strictly needed, but PhD admissions is insanely competitive at “top 30” programs. Strong grades, strong references, strong research experience, and a good personal statement will all be needed. If you have a publication by then that would not hurt.
I do wonder whether you should add an application for UNH since you are in-state. However this does not seem to be strictly necessary since you should be safe to get into at least one if not all of UVM, U.Conn, and U.Mass.
And I do think that you are doing very well.