I am not sure how much it matters if a college is classified as a target or a reach. The most important category is going to be the safety schools. RPI seems like an outlier given the rest of your son’s list. If he would be happy attending either of the safeties, it’s perfectly fine to apply to a bunch of high match or reach schools.
Since your son is at a private school, his college counselor should be able to give you an idea of your son’s chances better than anyone on CC can. Our private school didn’t rank either, but as @VirginiaBelle stated above, colleges will be able to figure out from his school profile where your kid stands in his class. That being said, class rank is not everything (especially if your school is sending a high percentage of the class to elite universities). Rigor matters too. My son is a physics major in college and took all of the notoriously tough APs in high school - Calc BC, World History, Chemistry, Physics C etc. as well as multivariable and linear algebra. He had classmates who took “easier” APs and had GPAs that were as high or higher than his. Even though his rank may have been lower, he was accepted at colleges where those other kids were rejected.
Do you or your son have a geographic preference? You seem to have west coast, Midwest and Northeast. Am I correct in assuming anything in the South isn’t under consideration? My son just finished his first year at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. It would probably be a match school for your son. Although it is called a “college”, it is a research university with about 6000 undergrads and has a great physics program. The physics department is large for a school it’s size (30 fulltime teaching faculty plus another 15 in purely research positions). They have partnerships with both NASA Langley and the Jefferson Lab. It functions more like an LAC with small class sizes and an emphasis on undergraduate teaching and research. All of the classes and labs are taught by professors rather than TAs. My son is really enjoying the personal relationships with his professors and the ability to be involved in research as a freshman.