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.
Does he have any preferences for school size? Since he’s unsure of what his major will be maybe best to go to a school with a wide variety of majors?
Santa Clara, U San Diego, and LMU came to mind. USD has a beautiful campus. He probably would be competitive for high amount of merit. I see a lot of Cali parents looking at the Arizona schools. Otherwise going to UC school sounds good even if you go the CC route first. All of them are ranked.
Big merit scholarships are typically offered to admits who are at the high end of the range for the college. From the applicant’s point of view, such colleges are usually “low match” or “safety” for admission. The scholarships themselves may be “reach” even if admission is “safety” (however, some scholarships are automatic for stats or NMF status, so they could be “safety” if the applicant meets those requirements).
Some highly selective colleges that may be considered “reach” for admission offer a few large merit scholarships, but those scholarships should be considered “super reach” if admission is already considered “reach”.