What schools offer generous merit aid

The last line here is the critical point (which means none of these colleges are likely to be much use). To get meaningfully below the instate price point (~$30K per year for UCs before any Regents money) you’ll need a full tuition or better scholarship. So limit your applications to schools that offer those scholarships.

KevinfromOC’s thread lists a number of those, but be aware that his D is an URM (and a female STEM student) as well as an NHRP scholar. If you’re not then it will be much harder to win many of these awards, especially without NMF. And without high end ECs it will be very tough to get any of the really competitive scholarships at famous schools (Duke, UVA, UNC, Vanderbilt etc)

So you’ll need to look primarily at places with merit for stats like Alabama. Closer to home Utah also offers full tuition for 4.0/1570. It should be possible to get down to $20K per year or less at a number of similar schools, then you can decide if $5K more for a mid tier UC with Regents or $10K more per year at a top tier UC is worth it.