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<p>If they have not assured you that the finances will work comfortably, it would be wise to have some very low cost safeties (e.g. Alabama with the big scholarship, or even some of the full ride scholarships like Louisiana Tech and Prairie View A&M) in your application list, just in case what they can actually contribute is less than what they think they can contribute. There are a lot of sad stories in April around here about students who get into some nice colleges, but find that none are affordable because they and their parents did not discuss costs beforehand while making the application list.</p>
<p>If you can get the price limit out of your parents and some basic financial information, you can run the net price calculators at each school. For those that are too expensive, and which do not have any merit scholarships that you can try for, you can drop them from the list.</p>
<p>The mid-level UCs are pretty likely for admission, though the holistic process means that nothing is completely for sure. The fact that your lowest SAT section was math may cause admissions readers to question you for engineering. For changing majors, you need to check each campus individually to see which changes are easy or difficult (usually, changing into an engineering major is more difficult than the other way around, so it is likely better to go in as an engineering major than to try to switch in later).</p>