The California Institute of Technology, or CalTech, is a private research university that occupies a 124 acre campus in the city of Pasadena, California, just 11 miles from Los Angeles.

In September 1891, philanthropist Amos Throop founded Throop University. In 1907 astronomer George Ellery Hale joined Throop University’s board of trustees and started transforming the university into a world class center for engineering and science. Later, chemist Arthur A. Noyes and physicist Robert A. Millikan, and his successors joined with Hale and plotted the university, which had been renamed to the California Institute of Technology by then, on a course for scientific and academic excellence.

According to the common data set, 69% of CalTech’s enrollment of 987 full time students identify as students of color, and 31% of them are international students. CalTech students come from across the country and 25 countries for the class of 2026.

CalTech has an endowment of over $4.6 billion.

Distinguished alumni from CalTech include Howard Hughes - businessman, aviator, and film director, Richard Feynman - physicist and scientist, Charlie Munger - investor and businessman, and Frank Capra - film director and producer, among many others.

Costs of attending CalTech 2022-2023

Tuition costs - $58,479

Fees - $2,385

Housing/Room - $10,815

Board/Meals - $7,791

Books and Supplies (est.) - 1,428

Personal Expenses (est.) - $2,700

Total Estimated Cost of Attendance - $83,598

Access CalTech’s Net Price Calculator

CalTech Statistics at a Glance

Sports at CalTech

CalTech belongs in NCAA Division 3, and the NCAA rules and calendar for athlete recruitment apply to athletes interested in being athlete recruited to CalTech.

CalTech has an undergraduate enrollment of 987 students and plays a total of 16 NCAA sports, 8 of them for men and 8 for women. In the 2021/2022 season, Caltech had a total of 289 NCAA athletes comprising 29% of the total student body.

See:

What NCAA Sports does CalTech Play?

Caltech’s athlete recruitment policies

What you can expect from CalTech

CalTech’s mission is to enhance human knowledge and be of service to humanity through research combined with education. Their goal is for students to tackle the world’s most difficult problems in science and technology and to give students a world class education to be productive members of society.

Is CalTech hard to get into?

With an acceptance rate of 4% for the Class of 2025, CalTech is a difficult university to gain admission to.

As of June 2020, CalTech has enacted a moratorium on requiring SAT and ACT scores which will last until 2025. This means that not only are test scores no longer a requirement, but will no longer be considered. However, before this date, the reported middle 50% range for SAT scores was 1530-1580 and for ACT it was 35-36.

What this means is that CalTech now relies heavily on grades and rigor of classes taken by the applicant as a proxy for college readiness in the absence of a test score.

An applicant to CalTech today must present as a high level academic achiever and a unique striver in his/her activities as well.

Where do CalTech graduates work and what do they earn?

According to CalTech, 92% of their graduating class of 2020 students were in graduate school or at a full time job, and 98% of students who applied to graduate schools were accepted to one of their top choice schools.

Highlights of employers who hire CalTech graduates:

• NASA

• Northrop Grumman

• Apple

• The Aerospace Corporation

• SpaceX

• US Navy

• Xenon Health

• Myriad Genetics

• Rapid7

• Arete

• ClearView

• Gilead

• Jane Street

• Miso Robotics

• Molecular Instruments

• Omniscience Science

• Singular Genomics

• Western Asset

Earnings Data for CalTech Graduates

With the costs of attending college becoming prohibitively expensive, it is hard to treat the college experience as a strictly educational and developmental one. You have to think about your earnings potential as well. Unless you are very lucky, chances are that you will graduate with some student debt. Whether you can afford to pay it off in reasonable time, and not have this debt interfere with your ability to live your life without a overhanging debt burden depends on what you can earn when you graduate from college.

Knowing what you can earn with the the degree you earn and the college you earned it at is essential for planning your life. The data we provide here is meant as a guideline only as there will be variance between individuals based on many factors including the types of jobs and employers they pursue.

Data from Payscale based on 234 responses

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