unitid 110404 · Pasadena, CA · private nonprofit 4-year · city (midsize)
California Institute of Technology
Private university in Pasadena, California
- founded
- 1891
- enrollment 2023
- 2,518
- predominant degree
- Bachelor's
- website
- caltech.edu
- motto
- “The truth shall make you free”
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States that are devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences. wikipedia rev 1364261434 ↗
scorecard 2026-06 · percentiles within private nonprofit 4-years
The record
admission rate
3%
0th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
undergraduates
987
50th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
Pell share
18%
undergrads on Pell grants
16th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
completion
94%
finish within 150% time
97th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
sticker cost / yr
$86,886
97th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
avg net price / yr
$16,075
after aid, aided students
22nd pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
median earnings, 10 yr
$128,566
after entry, Title IV students
100th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years
median grad debt
not reported
what families actually pay
Cost
Sticker price is a fiction for most families — net price is what aided students pay after grants, by family income.
Average net price by family income, 2023–24 aid cohort
Families earning under $30k paid $-2,133 per year after aid.
Dashed hollow marks are privacy-suppressed brackets — not zero. Band: middle half of private nonprofit 4-years (all incomes).
Who enrolls, by family income
family income mix not reported
- Median family income
- $44,848
- First-generation students
- not reported
- In-state tuition & fees
- $65,898
earnings · debt · programs
Outcomes
Median earnings after entry, working grads with federal aid
Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only.
What programs pay — top fields of study
| program | grads | earn 5 yr | debt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Computer Science. | 67 | — | — |
| Chemistry. | 39 | $133,219 | — |
| Mechanical Engineering. | 36 | — | — |
| Physics. | 26 | — | — |
| Physics. | 24 | — | — |
| Physics. | 20 | — | — |
| Biomedical/Medical Engineering. | 18 | — | — |
| Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering. | 18 | — | — |
| Engineering Physics. | 18 | — | — |
| Biomedical/Medical Engineering. | 17 | — | — |
| Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering. | 16 | — | — |
| Astronomy and Astrophysics. | 16 | — | — |
— is privacy suppression at small programs, never zero. Earnings are median, 5 years after completing.
annual scorecard files, 1996–2026
Trajectory
Line breaks are years where the measure wasn't collected — a gap is not a zero.
Admission rate
Price per year
- sticker
- net
Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry
Undergraduates
wikidata · 4,901 people recorded
Memory
Wikidata is not an alumni census: a person appears only when volunteer editors record them. Counts measure the archive's memory - access x achievement x documentation - never placement rates or institutional quality.
Field fingerprint — share of recorded alumni by field
Women among recorded alumni, by birth decade
People without a recorded gender are excluded; decades with fewer than 5 recorded alumni are dropped.
Wikipedia attention
monthly article views since 2015
most recorded occupationsresearcher (1,894) · university teacher (719) · physicist (399) · mathematician (214) · engineer (188) · astronomer (165) · chemist (165) · computer scientist (165)
Nobel laureates who studied here
- Carl David Anderson Physics 1936
- Edwin McMillan Chemistry 1951
- Linus Pauling Chemistry 1954
- William Shockley Physics 1956
- Donald Arthur Glaser Physics 1960
- Linus Pauling Peace 1962
- Charles Hard Townes Physics 1964
- James Rainwater Physics 1975
- Howard Temin Medicine 1975
- William Lipscomb Chemistry 1976
- Robert Wilson Physics 1978
- Kenneth G. Wilson Physics 1982
- William Alfred Fowler Physics 1983
- Edward B. Lewis Medicine 1995
- Douglas Osheroff Physics 1996
- Robert C. Merton Economics 1997
- Lee Hartwell Medicine 2001
- Vernon L. Smith Economics 2002
- Martin Karplus Chemistry 2013
- Eric Betzig Chemistry 2014
- Arthur B. McDonald Physics 2015
- Kip S. Thorne Physics 2017
- Michael Rosbash Medicine 2017
- Andrea M. Ghez Physics 2020
- Ardem Patapoutian Medicine 2021
- John Clauser Physics 2022
The portrait wall
Sized by nothing, ordered by Wikipedia footprint (language editions).
Linus Pauling
112 wikis · Public domain
Donald Knuth
94 wikis · CC BY-SA 2.0
William Shockley
93 wikis · CC BY 3.0
Carl David Anderson
85 wikis · No restrictions
Frank Capra
84 wikis · Public domain
Charles Hard Townes
84 wikis · Public domain
Benoit Mandelbrot
82 wikis · CC BY-SA 2.0 fr
Robert Wilson
82 wikis · CC BY 2.0
Donald Arthur Glaser
80 wikis · Public domain
Howard Hughes
76 wikis · Public domain
William Alfred Fowler
75 wikis · Public domain
Andrea M. Ghez
72 wikis · CC BY-SA 4.0
Kenneth G. Wilson
69 wikis · CC BY-SA 4.0
Kip S. Thorne
68 wikis · CC BY-SA 3.0
John McCarthy
67 wikis · CC BY-SA 2.0
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Compare with peers
built 2026-07-17
Provenance
- U.S. Dept. of Education College Scorecard, 2026-06 release. Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only. Suppressed values are null, never imputed.
- Annual Scorecard files 1996-2026. A null in early years usually means the measure was not yet collected, not zero.
- Coordinates and locale describe the campus address, not where students live.
- Wikidata is not an alumni census: a person appears only when volunteer editors record them. Counts measure the archive's memory - access x achievement x documentation - never placement rates or institutional quality.
- Images are from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses. Render the credit line (artist + license) with every image.
- Lead text from Wikipedia (revision 1364261434), CC BY-SA 4.0.