@DavidPuddy I wouldn’t dismiss NMF too quickly. If nothing else, the prospect may motivate him to keep his grades up. From what I have read here, as long as there are no Cs on the transcript, it’s likely. A few scattered Bs are OK.
Regardless, I can sympathize with your dilemma. My D is a high-achieving student with high-achieving friends. In her cohort there is a considerable gap between the EFC and what the family can pay. So compromises had to be made. Three families that I know were limited to room and board costs and had to seek out full tuition merit scholarships. One ended up at ASU Barrett. One got a full ride scholarship at UNM. One is likely to end up at UT-Dallas, where she also got a full tuition scholarship. These are girls with near 4.0 unweighted averages, standardized test scores in the 32-35 range for ACT and commended or above for SAT.
Rest assured that wherever your son ends up, he will find intellectual peers because many families are exactly in the same situation you are with regards to cost. @Mom2aphysicsgeek is a terrific example. Her kids are AMAZING, with deep knowledge in specific areas and have placed very well to advance their academic interests. Both have gotten great deals, one at Alabama and the other at South Carolina, I believe.
I agree that there are few alternatives among the WUE schools that compare academically ASU and UA. However, if your son is interested in matriculating at a smaller campus, some of the better picks are Western Washington University, where your son would be almost assured of WUE discount plus admission into the honors program. About 15K students, gorgeous campus, surrounded by outdoor recreation opportunities. Not brown, hot, or dry, if your son would like a change. Washington State is also a reasonable choice. Still, that would probably bring your costs down to 20K, which isn’t quite enough.
Some LACs/smaller universities that offer small numbers of full tuition scholarships are Denison (OH), U of Puget Sound (WA) Grinnell (IA), U of Richmond (VA), Southwestern (TX), Colorado College, Case Western (OH), Wash U (MO) and Vanderbilt (TN).
As should be evident by now, if you go down in the rankings, the possibilities for merit increase. In our experience, a 25-30K merit scholarship at a 25-80 ranked LAC or college is a reasonable aspiration for a high stats kid. But with sticker price at 60-65K, that wouldn’t be enough. A much smaller subset offer full tuition awards, usually by separate application, and there may be only a handful available at each institution.
Good luck and you are by no means behind the curve in the process. Standardized testing is mostly done. I recommend the early June testing date for subject tests and I suspect your son would do well on the Math II (he can try to get his 800 aspirations fulfilled there, perhaps?). My D took three and then sent the highest two scores. She ended up not needing them but that’s hindsight.