A couple of thinks I’d like to suggest,
First, make sure you are positive, upbeat, and forward-looking in your applications. Here, you introduce yourself as an unimpressive engineering major. It looks like you are a bright young person so it’s not true. More importantly, you don’t won’t to come across as cocky, but a school will want to know what you have accomplished and what you will bring to the school’s community. It’s not a time to be hard on yourself. You’re obviously bright. If you have not done much outside of high school, you’ll want to think about what you would like to do in college, which is a terrific time to explore your interests–lots of opportunities and resources.
Also, your ACT score is obviously very high and your grades good, at least until now (you seem to be indicating a difficult semester). You suggest that your AP scores have not been strong. Is motivation an issue? Is their a lack of resilience and “grit”?
Motivation: High school is not motivating to many, many students, probably more so if they are very bright. They can then just pack off and head to college because it seems to be the next thing. A student really needs to want to be at college and understand at some level why they are reading lots, writing paper, and crawling out of bed on a cold morning to sit in a classroom. Often they are not ready for that, which can cause difficulties.
Resilience: College can be much harder than high school. Much, much more of the work is done outside the classroom. Students have to be willing to spend lots of hours deciding themselves to work hard. I’ve know several students who’ve started a semester badly and just give up. You have to keep fighting, working hard, trying to learn from your mistakes and doing better the next time. Are you doing that? Will you do that in college?
This is all especially true in engineering, which is very demanding and requires students study hard and effectively from day one. It is very hard to make A’s and B’s in freshman engineering. It will not be done without regular work.
If you want other options, google colleges that meet full financial need and colleges that provide good merit aid. Some that come to mind for your interests, etc. are Franklin and Marshall (3-2), and a handful of publics like Alabama-Huntsville, and the New Mexico and Arizona publics, though these don’t really fit your cultural interests. I think you might like WPI, which is a terrific school, but it would probably be too expensive.
If it does not work out at CA schools, and it might very well work out, what about a working year before college. You’d have to make sure to check the criteria for in-state status, but you could go to a likely state with a school or schools where you were interested and then work for a year and get in-state tuition there. Would Oregon be more affordable if you lived and worked there for a year first? Often students can have a lot of growth during this year and learn why college is important. (Suddenly getting out of bed to go to class doesn’t seem that hard when you’ve been getting out of bed to go to work.) Then they can be much more effective students. It seems like a long time but how fast has the last year gone?
Good luck!