I would definitely include St Olaf, very strong for his majors of interest and will likely consider his upward trend favorably + have time to read the explanation for the lower 9th grade results. He would need to demonstrate interest ASAP by joining their mailing list and clicking on the messages they send (this is tracked). You may also be able to visit if you visit UMN since it’s 45mn South of the Twin Cities.
Wisconsin has lots of solid public universities beside UWisc Madison (which is world class but where his GPA may not be sufficient to gain him access to his majors of interest.) Eau-Claire and Stout would be safeties, or UMN Morris.
Overall I think he’ll do better with private colleges since they have more staff per applicant, pay more attention to subjective factors such as personal circumstances&essays, and aren’t as brutally GPA/test scores as very large public universities.
What’s your budget? Can you run the NPC on St Olaf and others (Lawrence WI, Beloit, Hamline, St Thomas, Luther IA..)
University of Iowa would be an excellent safety because it has an academic index for automatic admission and he’s well above it so he’d hear back quickly. It’d likely take a lot of stress off his shoulders.
He should apply to the Honors as soon as he gets his acceptance.