I believe CMU also excludes freshman grades from the GPA. OP, how does the NPC look for CMU Tepper? Any better than NYU, or no?
Emory, mentioned above, also doesn’t include freshman grades in the recalculated GPA. You can also use Hope/Zell there, but I don’t know if that would change the bottom line for you - in most cases, colleges won’t “stack” scholarships to drop your out-of-pocket below what the need-based financial aid formula indicates as your expected family contribution. Emory does have no-loan aid, so at least the cost that you see is debt-free, and you could elect to take the guaranteed loans and drop your out-of-pocket a bit more. See how the NPC looks.
Berkeley is unaffordable, full-stop. And the other OOS flagships. How would you pay for these??? You have such great options in-state, with such great state-level financial support… and you’re NMSF. You will have affordable options.
SMU is another strong business school with potential big merit; the NMF award is only 5K/year but there are other bigger scholarships that are possible.
Definitely look at the big-merit NMF schools already mentioned above. This ongoing thread may also be useful Big merit NMF/NMSF schools and their specialties
Above all, do not submit a binding ED application to any school whose expected family contribution you cannot afford. Have you found any schools that are affordable on need-based aid alone? How does Stanford look? (An unlikely admit, but their aid is about as good as it gets. If Stanford isn’t affordable with aid, then need-based aid probably isn’t your path to getting college paid for - look to the big in-state and NMF scholarships instead.)