Key Statistics

85% of undergraduate students live in Caltech housing, where they study, socialize, and dine together. Students remain part of the same close-knit community all four years. There are more than 150 student clubs and sports organizations on campus, ranging from juggling and alpine climbing to entrepreneurship and robotics. Over 80% of students participate in intercollegiate, club, intramural, and informal recreational activities. Overall the life at Caltech is full of diverse experiences, perspectives, and passions with students from all over the United States and across the globe.

Caltech has six academic divisions viz. Biology & Biological Engineering, Engineering & Applied Science, etc. that offer about 27 options (majors) in total. The class size is relatively small with 235 members in the freshmen class resulting in an excellent student to faculty ratio of 3:1. It also has many global facilities such as Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech Seismological Laboratory among others.

Caltech has over 24,000 alumni in the U.S. and around the world. Twenty-two alumni and 15 non-alumni faculties have won the Nobel Prize. The alumni have founded, or co-founded, companies such as Hotmail, Compaq, MathWorks, and Intel, etc.

Millikan Library is one of the most-often-shaken buildings in the world, as Caltech's seismologists use it to test earthquake detectors and to gather other types of seismological data. Every morning during finals week, at 7 a.m. on the dot, Richard Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries' is played at an ear-splitting volume.