Caltech at a Glance

last updated March 24, 2023

Caltech is a world-renowned science and engineering Institute that marshals some of the world's brightest minds and most innovative tools to address fundamental scientific questions and pressing societal challenges. Caltech's extraordinary faculty and students are expanding our understanding of the universe and inventing the technologies of the future, with research interests from quantum science and engineering to bioinformatics and the nature of life itself, from human behavior and economics to energy and sustainability.

Caltech is small but prizes excellence and ambition. The contributions of Caltech's faculty and alumni have earned national and international recognition, including 46 Nobel Prizes. The Institute manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA, sending probes to explore the planets of our solar system and quantify changes on our home planet; owns and operates large-scale research facilities such as the Seismological Laboratory and a global network of astronomical observatories, including the Palomar and W. M. Keck Observatories; and cofounded and co-manages LIGO, which, in 2016, observed gravitational waves for the first time.

The Institute has one of the nation's lowest student-to-faculty ratios, with 300 professorial faculty members offering a rigorous curriculum and access to varied learning opportunities and hands-on research to approximately 1,000 undergraduates and 1,400 graduate students. Caltech is an independent, privately supported institution with a 124-acre campus located in Pasadena, California.

Mission

The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society.

History

Founded as Throop University in 1891 in Pasadena, California, and renamed the California Institute of Technology in 1920.

Research and Education

Academic Divisions

Academic options (majors)

Faculty¹

Approximately 300 professorial faculty
More than 600 research scholars
3:1 student-faculty ratio

Honors

Nobel Laureates²: 46
National Medal of Science Recipients²: 64
National Medal of Technology and Innovation Recipients³: 13
National Academies Memberships³: 121

Students¹

982 undergraduate students
1,419 graduate students
99% placed in the top tenth of their high school graduating class

Class of 2026:

16,629 applicants
224 members of the first-year class
48% female / 52% male (self-identified sex)

Affording Caltech

Students receiving need-based assistance: 51%
Average need-based financial-aid package: $59,980
Average indebtedness for students graduating with loans (Class of 2022): $17,219.
Graduating seniors with student loans (Class of 2022): 27%

Living Alumni

Over 24,000 in the U.S. and around the world

Global Facilities

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Founded by Caltech in the 1930s and managed for NASA since 1958
Current missions include the InSight, Mars Science Laboratory, Juno, Jason 3, and NuSTAR
More than 100 research and mission collaborations with Caltech faculty

Caltech Seismological Laboratory

Internationally recognized for excellence in geophysical research
Provides research centers for seismic studies, high-performance computing, and mineral physics
Preeminent source for earthquake information in Southern California and around the world

International Observatory Network

W. M. Keck Observatory, Hawaii
Palomar Observatory, California
Caltech Submillimeter Observatory, Hawaii
Owens Valley Radio Observatory, California
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Washington and Louisiana
Chajnantor Observatory, Chile

Employees

Caltech: 3,500
JPL: 6,500

¹2021–22 academic year
²Faculty and alumni
³Includes trustees