OK OP, your CR + M score is currently 1170, and ACT 26.
If you sharpen your test taking skills and can achieve ACT 30 or SAT equivalent by the Dec test taking time, and you are studying engineering, and you apply for admission and scholarship deadline for UA (University of AL) in December, you will qualify for Presidential Scholarship (full tuition scholarship for 4 years) and extra $10K in engineering (other students have to have ACT 32 equiv OOS for Presidential; engineering scholarship fulfills).
Higher test scores will help you with your CA state school applications and other school applications and merit scholarships.
Essentially your parents are willing to contribute room and board and incidental costs.
In order for you to get merit, your stats have to be where a school is willing to give you merit.
UA has been growing their STEM and recruiting higher stat kids, and incoming classes now have more OOS students (and a pretty good amount from CA).
In case you haven’t seen this, this gives some of the background on UA’s growth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrV8g7kxJps
A school like Purdue (if you receive acceptance to their main campus and in your field of study) is going to be way expensive when you consider cost/benefit.
I know a student with a bigger budget that didn’t have three admission safeties, with ACT 30 and strong GPA (achieved that test score in junior year and didn’t retest in senior year). He now is going to a private college that his mom attended that doesn’t even has his degree plan (he will go 2 years, and then transfer to one of three schools to complete the engineering in 3 more years unless he changes his major and stays for 4 years to the high cost private). He was admitted to VaTech (OOS for him) but not in his major; he didn’t want to go to his home state university (the only one that admitted him into his eng degree choice - he was awarded full tuition scholarship). He IMHO applied to a school he had no chance of getting in (Stanford). He was ‘shocked’ by his limited choices when all was said and done. Parents didn’t make him look at or apply to schools he didn’t want to look at (I think they are not going to make that mistake with their younger student).
You need to apply to enough true safeties (where you can get in for your major and where you can afford). You want to keep UG debt as low as possible. Maybe your parents are not willing to take out Plus loans - the amount you can borrow is very limited as a UG fr, so, jr, sr.
Use your time well, especially during your first semester senior year - if you can, cut back on school and EC responsibilities - focus on the testing and your school applications/scholarship applications. You have to cast a big enough net. During second semester perhaps you can do some visits and get to your final school choice that is affordable and where you can study your areas of engineering. My eng DD got her ACT score up to the 30 during her first semester senior year with a lot of effort, and she cut back on everything else to focus on it with test tutoring, practice tests, etc. She even took the SAT again just because getting the full tuition scholarship and extra eng scholarship was such a big financial boost.