According to Tulane’s Common Data Set, 9.6% of applicants were accepted. Your son’s 34 ACT is above Tulane’s 25th percentile, but that doesn’t mean that odds are at least 50% of acceptance. Tulane is very fond of lots of demonstrated interest and as has been mentioned elsewhere, including the yield protection thread, does have a tendency to yield protect (i.e. reject applicants whose stats are higher than their typical if they think the student is unlikely to attend). So if Tulane is going to be of serious consideration for your son, he’s going to want to show them lots of love.
At Rice, they’ve only posted their common data set from 20-21, so this information is for fall 2020, but its acceptance rate was 10.9%.
Many feel that colleges that accept less than 20% of applicants should all be considered reaches. Most students don’t apply unless they think that they have a decent shot of being accepted. These colleges have lots of very qualified applicants, enough to fill their classes multiple times over. Who ends up being picked often feels like luck to students, but it depends on what the university needs to round out its class and what they’re looking for that particular year. So although I think your son would be qualified to be admitted to any of the reach universities and would do well at any of them, due to the overwhelming odds of rejection for most qualified applicants, I still would qualify these as reaches.