Caltech at a Glance
last updated June 11, 2024
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 more than 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
- Biology & Biological Engineering
- Chemistry & Chemical Engineering
- Engineering & Applied Science
- Geological & Planetary Sciences
- Humanities & Social Sciences
- Physics, Mathematics & Astronomy
Faculty
323 professorial faculty
558 postdoctoral scholars
3:1 student-faculty ratio
Honors
Nobel Laureates: 46
National Medal of Science Recipients: 66
National Medal of Technology and Innovation Recipients: 14
National Academies Memberships: 120
Students
1,023 undergraduate students
1,440 graduate students
99% placed in the top tenth of their high school graduating class
Class of 2027:
- 13,136 applicants
- 267 members of the first-year class
- 42% female / 58% 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 25,000 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
- Owens Valley Radio Observatory, California
- Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), Washington and Louisiana
- Chajnantor Observatory, Chile
Employees
- Caltech: 2,500
- JPL: 6,000