Your old GPA will most likely bring you down.
I was in your situation–last two years of HS saw a decline, I didn’t study for SATs, yet still took all APs, etc. I knew I was gonna try to transfer since late junior year. Local uni I ended up in to doesn’t have my major, so my essays focused around that, and how the school wasn’t challenging enough, etc. etc. Academic reasons are pretty solid (compared to social/location reasons), your essays will be fine. Moreso if you can write some outstanding ones, which I’m sure you could.
Your old gpa is going to hold you back, though. I decided to transfer after my sophomore year to give me a better chance. However, my high school GPA was a 3.4 unweighted at a top 100 US HS, and 5.6 weighted. Heck, I wasn’t even confident enough. Your gpa is definitely going to hinder you, so you might have a better shot after a second year. That’s also assuming you get as close to a 4.0 as possible at your uni.
By all means, you can always still try to transfer after your freshman year. For me, it felt like too much effort (especially since I was recovering from whatever happened to me during HS) and I didn’t have as much to work with to really showcase improvement and desire in my intended major, so I decided to wait until soph year. It ended up being a good choice for me, since most of my major credits transfer, I went for free, and I still got what I wanted in the end.
Your school list is fine. Mine included some of those schools as well.
It’s good that you’re looking at schools with more generous transfer admissions. It’s hard for anyone to get into the really prestigious schools like Yale and Columbia as a transfer, even with a 4.0.
Here’s the thing: you can surely try. My transfer school list included mostly Ivies + SM and was based on prestige. At the end though, I don’t know if I really just wisened up during college or what, but I applied to a practical bunch that had both what I wanted and a reasonable transfer rate. Only two ended up being Ivies. It costs money for the fees, so that was a limiting factor (Stanford was on my list, but it’s just another school to me–surely not a dream–and with a 1% admissions rate, $90 fee, and boatload of essays, it was easy just to save it for grad school).
Your school selection is reasonable. You could just keep it the way it is. I also applied to Brandeis, UMich (where I’ll be going for physics/math next year), Duke, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Reed, and Carleton. I don’t understand why you don’t think you could transfer to Richmond or Davidson though. You could still keep them on the list, their essays just won’t be similar to what you have for Berkeley, for example. You could apply wherever you want for whatever reason.