California Institute of Technology

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

Students at Caltech can choose from 28 undergraduate major options and 30 graduate major options spread across six academic divisions. 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 1,250 graduate students.

Caltech is small but prizes excellence and ambition. The contributions of Caltech's faculty and alumni have earned national and international recognition, including 39 Nobel Prizes. The Institute manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA, sending probes to explore the planets of solar system and quantify changes on 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.

Situated in the heart of Pasadena at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, Caltech's 124-acre campus is 10 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles and approximately 30 miles from the ocean.