As a parent who has been through this process twice, my advice is to build a college list from the bottom up, starting with the safeties and matches, and then adding the reaches. It’s easy to identify reaches – they are schools typically ranked in the top 20. It’s much more challenging to find safeties and matches which are affordable and where the applicant would be happy to attend.
To the OP: are you in-state in CA? If so, there are experienced posters on this site who can offer advice about what UC schools are matches and safeties (that list often include schools like Riverside). If you are not in CA, then the UC schools generally do not offer good financial aid to out of state students, and those schools will not be affordable to someone needing financial aid. Same goes for schools like University of Wisconsin – an excellent flagship, but unaffordable for an OOS student with high financial need. University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, and University of Michigan are the few flagships which, I believe, do offer decent financial aid to out of state students – and that is one reason why they are SO competitive for admission for OOS students. Also, with public universities, out of state students need higher gpas and test scores to be admitted than instate students – so just because the posted stats for a school, for ex., say an ACT range of 28-32, that does not mean that an out of state student with a 28 will get in, they almost certainly won’t. An out of state student applying to a good flagship should fall close to the top 25% of a flagship to be competitive for admissions.
What is your instate public flagship? That is usually a solid safety for a high achieving student, especially if there are Honors or special research opportunities offered to high-achieving kids.
The OP’s list seems to be largely research institutions, so other schools to consider that are more like matches: Case Western, in Cleveland, offers good merit awards, though I do not know how good it is on financial aid. George Washington and American in DC, though those are most appealing to kids interested in government. Tulane, Emory, Syracuse, Boston University, are all possible matches, though demonstrating interest will matter at several of them. Since Boston College is on the list – if the OP is open to Catholic schools, perhaps Holy Cross in MA, or some of the Loyola schools (Chicago, LA). The mid-range Catholic schools, like Dayton, Marquette, and Xavier, can offer good merit awards to high achieving kids. Others here have experience with the merit awards offered at Alabama, which offer strong Honors program, so that is one to consider.
Yes, Princeton, Yale and a few others offer fabulous financial aid for the low-income student who is admitted. But it is essential that the OP get the family’s federal tax returns from '15 and sit down with the Net Price Calculator online at a range of schools, to see what the predicted financial aid awards will be and whether the family can afford the Expected Family Contribution. Non-custodial parents in a divorce situation, families with a small business, those can all complicate financial aid awards. This is the time to sort out the possibilities to craft an effective list.