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 future technologies, 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. Caltech's faculty and alumni's contributions have earned national and international recognition, including 38 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 comanages 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 1,250 graduate students. Caltech is an independent, privately supported institution with a 124-acre campus located in Pasadena, California.
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.
Founded as Throop University in 1891 in Pasadena, California, and renamed the California Institute of Technology in 1920.
Throughout its history, the California Institute of Technology has ventured into unexplored realms, defining new fields in science and engineering, and pushing interdisciplinary boundaries in the service of discovery. Caltech's commitment to the absolute excellence of its faculty, students, and staff—building a great university one outstanding individual at a time—has created an international presence that magnifies the Institute's size. Fearlessness in attacking large and essential problems at scale, from the nature of the chemical bond to quarks and quasars to the brain's structure, marks the cultural capital that aligns and knits together Caltech's intellectual community. We remain committed to setting the example of what the intertwined missions of research and education can accomplish.
Caltech arose from the vision of George Ellery Hale, Robert A. Millikan, and Arthur A. Noyes, who almost 100 years ago conceived of a gathering of individuals dedicated to "vitalizing all the work of the Institute by the infusion in a generous measure of the spirit of research." Today, the Institute comprises approximately 300 faculty members, 950 undergraduates from 46 states and 26 countries, 1,250 graduate students, 600 research scholars, and 4,000 staff members. Institute researchers founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1936, and Caltech continues to manage JPL for NASA. JPL's 5,000 employees are tightly connected to the campus research mission and permit the Institute to push space and earth science frontiers.
Caltech's unflinching commitment to scientific leadership is notably expressed in the fabrication and operation of instrumentation that reveals nature in unexpected dimensions, whether through the world's largest and most productive telescopes, a seismological network of unprecedented scale, or the development of implantable medical devices to improve human well-being. Caltech receives more invention disclosures per faculty member than any other university in the United States.
Caltech undergraduates enroll in core courses in physics, humanities, social sciences, math, chemistry, and biology, while a broad array of academic programs provide an opportunity for tailored educational experiences.
Caltech students are eligible to apply for study abroad programs during their sophomore or junior years to study abroad during their junior or senior years. Students receive a minimum of 36 units, provided that they pass their coursework, and it is possible to get additional units. Students can receive general credit or option credit. Students can also get humanities or social science credit in most programs. Courses taken abroad can fulfill specific option requirements—actually replace a course taken here—as long as the instructor agrees to evaluate the student's return.
Each fall, we hold Study Abroad information meetings to explain the application process and program options, and have students who have participated in study abroad speak to share their experiences. Announcements for the meetings are sent via the Caltech email directory. In the FASA library, you will find sample proposals, surveys on the academic and social experience at each program completed by former participants, and other resources about each program.
Graduate students collaborate with the top researchers to push past technological barriers and increase understanding of the world.
Caltech provides one of the nation's best values in higher education, thanks to robust need-based financial aid and scholarship awards available to students throughout their study. All undergraduate financial aid is awarded based on need. Annually, nearly 60 percent of undergraduates receive aid under Caltech's policy to provide all U.S. citizens and permanent residents with the support required to meet 100 percent of their families' demonstrated need. Approximately 98 percent of graduate and 99 percent of doctoral students receive full financial support. Aid is awarded annually in the form of fellowships and assistantships.
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