One thing you can do is look for forum posts regarding those specific colleges. Here’s one specifically about UC schools and Chemical Engineering (you might’ve seen this already): http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/950725-chemical-engineering-which-uc.html
For touring colleges, I think it depends alot on where you live. As for me, I havent had much of a chance of touring the schools I want to go to because theyre all on the opposite side of the country. I’ve heard often that students should visit during the actual year though. Visiting during the summer doesn’t let them actually see the students there and get a feel of what its like to study there.
Hard to chance him at this time mainly because SAT and ACT scores are unavailable. After you get those, you can check out the school sites and see if the scores are within range. The 3.9 GPA is really good though. Keep that up!
Sorry I couldn’t be of much help. I never even considered studying chemical engineering so I haven’t done much research on programs like that. I hope this’ll get something started on this thread though.
Happy searching!