Your parents need to run the Net Price Calculators. They also need to figure out just exactly what they are ready, willing, and able to pay each year for four years. Lots of people with incomes like your parents find that they have EFCs that they consider to be unaffordable for their families. We did. Happykid commuted to the local CC for two years, then transferred in-state.
You need to run the npc with your parents on your state schools UC’s, CSU’s, colleges with large endowment and/or meet-need philosophy like Scripps and Pomona, Colby, Dickinson; Holy Cross, Catholic colleges like Saint Michael’s, UScranton, Saint Mary 's of California. (You may also want to consider Saint Olaf - while Lutheran, it has a lot of Catholic students and it ‘meets need’.) You’d bring geographical and ethnic diversity to these colleges, which would be a hook.
Show interest at all - visit the private universities within driving distance, fill out the request info form for all others.
With 83k income you should qualify for state aid in California. Be aware that for UC’s, total cost (including room and board) is factored in, whereas it’s not the case for csu’s to the best of my knowledge since you’re supposed to commute. As a result, you may get better financial aid from, say, UCSC than from SDSU.
To give you some perspective, at top national LACs and national universities, 75k income for a family of 4 would mean a full ride. 83k with a family of six (if the children live there, they count for FAFSA and CSS Profile) would likely yield a lot of financial aid. Need-based aid is your best bet at 100%need colleges.
The issue, as you know, is your test score. Aiming doe a strong SAT August score is a good move.
Have you taken subject tests? If not, can you take two (related AP tests you just took) this June?
Merit aid depends on test scores so until you know how high you can score it’s hard to advise you. 1400 tends to be the expectation.
You can work on course rigor though - yours is good, but senior year is light; colleges expect 5 academic classes, math all four years, at least three units of science if you’re into humanities, the foreign language pushed to the highest possible as well as extra units in history, humanities, and social science.
AP psychology is an AP lite so you end up with one college class per semester and AP lit throughout the year. I think it’d be seen as a problem.
You can send additional ‘signals’:
Can you replace that English college class with Intro to philosophy? It’s endear you more to Catholic universities, which tend to have a philosophy requirement, and since you’ve already taken AP English taking philosophy would show that you flex your intellectual ‘muscles’.
Plan to have two community college classes per semester (4 for the year).
Can you take an easy science class at a community college? Schedule it for spring so the grade won’t matter, even a C will do.
What’s the highest math you’ve taken?
Can you take a Spanish literature class at the cc to show what you can do beyond AP?
Community service : it’s not about hours. It’s about what impact you had.
Having a job ‘counts’ for EC 's and there hours per week matters.
At the end of this school year, I will have had 8 semesters of math because I chose to do 2 semesters last summer. I am about to finish Pre-Calculus.
Next year, I will have two CC courses per semester and two AP courses per semester as well. The Teaching & Learning class is also for college credit and will be both semesters. I would love to take a philosophy class, but it is not offered at my school. I will be taking 2 out of 3 college classes available.
Is it a college in high school class? I thought it was a college, so that you’d have lots of choices.
Wake Forest is test optional and is looking for diversity.