Some considerations that I have not seen discussed here.
- Does she want to remain in the US for her career or return to Brasil? If she is intending to relocate back to the US permanently then geography should be a large part of the discussion. Most schools have fairly limited geographic reach when it comes to job placements, internships and such. It is really only the Ivy and equivalents that have a national reach. If she wants to eventually settle in say the Northeast then that would be the best place to look for universities, not say...Arizona. I'm a grad of UW in Seattle. There is an amazingly strong alumni network for UW in the greater Seattle area so it would be the ideal place to go for a student who wanted to perhaps settle in the Seattle area. Perhaps not for someone who wanted to live and work in Texas where UT and A&M grads rule the roost.
- Most American students have some sort of home to go back to in the US during breaks, summers, and after graduation. It sounds like she will not have family in the US to live with. So picking a location that will make a good home is going to be more critical than for US students who might just be a short drive or plane ride home. I would avoid picking schools located in out of the way backwater towns that have little redeeming value as a place for a young person to live and start their career. I would rather be looking at schools that are within or on the edges of larger and more vibrant metro areas, not say in the middle of rural Iowa. Remote small town colleges can be lonely places during holidays and summers for international students when everyone else has gone home.
- I'm a former working biologist and now teach HS biology. It is one of the most common majors and most schools with reputable science departments are going to have decent biology departments. Rather than trying to parse rankings of biology programs, look for things like how much undergrads are involved in research since that is what it seems that she wants to do.
As for merit aid? We are in the exact same situation with a daughter interested in biology who will be entering fall 2021. Generally speaking, merit aid is something that schools offer who want to increase their competitiveness for students they would not otherwise attract. This means that both private and public schools at the top of their rankings generally do not offer merit aid, either as actual policy, or in effect. Schools like UCLA, Stanford, and UW-Seattle already attract far more top students than they can possibly enroll. So from their perspective, merit aid is just wasted money. Stanford can fill its freshman class with 100% full pay students several times over if it wanted. UCLA could probably do the same.
The schools that do offer merit aid are those trying to move up and compete with the next tier above them. So here on the west coast, University of Oregon offers generous merit aid to attract OOS students from CA, as does Washington State and Oregon State. While UW-Seattle does not because it is already at the top tier.
In terms of private schools, the top schools like Pomona, Stanford, and Caltech do not offer merit aid because they don’t need to. And near top schools like USC, while they technically still offer merit aid, an exceedingly small number of students actually qualify and receive it so it is more theoretically than real. By contrast the next tier down of private universities tend to have much more generous merit aid and commonly hand out 10-20k merit awards to students with your daughter’s equivalent stats. Here on the west coast that would be places like Gonzaga, University of Puget Sound, Lewis & Clark, Occidental, Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, etc.
So if merit aid is a major criteria in your search, look for the private and public schools that, while still good schools, are a step below the very top. Those are the ones who offer the most merit aid to students who might otherwise decide to go to higher rated schools if no merit aid were available.