California Institute of Technology

Motto:

The Truth shall make you free

California Institute of Technology is a private institution that was founded in 1891. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 977, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 124 acres. It utilizes a quarter-based academic calendar. California Institute of Technology's ranking in the 2015 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 10. Its tuition and fees are $43,362 (2014-15).

Caltech, which focuses on science and engineering, is located in Pasadena, California, approximately 11 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Social and academic life at Caltech centers on the eight student houses, which the school describes as "self-governing living groups." Student houses incorporate an admired Caltech tradition: dinners served by student waiters. Only freshmen are required to live on campus, but around 80 percent of students remain in their house for all four years. The Caltech Beavers have a number of NCAA Division III teams that compete in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Integral to student life is the Honor Code, which dictates that "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community."

In addition to its undergraduate studies, Caltech offers top graduate programs in engineering, biology, chemistry, computer science, earth sciences, mathematics and physics. Caltech participates in a significant amount of research, receiving grants from institutions such as NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Health and Human Services, among others. Caltech maintains a strong tradition of pranking with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, another top-ranked science and technology university. Companies such as Intel, Compaq and Hotmail were founded by Caltech alumni. Famous film director Frank Capra also graduated from Caltech.

Campus

The tallest building on campus, the Millikan Library

Caltech's 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located in Pasadena, California, approximately 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is within walking distance of Old Town Pasadena and the Pasadena Playhouse District and therefore the two locations are frequent getaways for Caltech students.

New additions to the campus include the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, and the Warren and Katherine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering followed in March 2010. The Institute also concluded an upgrading of the south houses in 2006. In late 2010, Caltech completed a 1.3 MW solar array projected to produce approximately 1.6 GWh in 2011.

Academic Life

The student-faculty ratio at California Institute of Technology is 3:1, and the school has 62.7 percent of its classes with fewer than 20 students. The most popular majors at California Institute of Technology include: Engineering; Physical Sciences; Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services; Mathematics and Statistics; and Biological and Biomedical Sciences. The average freshman retention rate, an indicator of student satisfaction, is 97.3 percent.

Student Life

Caltech's Mascot, the Beavers

California Institute of Technology has a total undergraduate enrollment of 977, with a gender distribution of 63.4 percent male students and 36.6 percent female students. At this school, 84 percent of the students live in college-owned, -operated, or -affiliated housing and 16 percent of students live off campus. California Institute of Technology is part of the NCAA III athletic conference.

• Pranks
  
  Caltech students have been known for the many pranks.
  
  
  
  The two most famous in recent history are the changing of the Hollywood Sign to read "Caltech", by judiciously covering up certain parts of the letters, and the changing of the scoreboard to read Caltech 38, MIT 9 during the 1984 Rose Bowl Game. But the most famous of all occurred during the 1961 Rose Bowl Game, where Caltech students altered the flip-cards that were raised by the stadium attendees to display "Caltech", and several other "unintended" messages. This event is now referred to as the Great Rose Bowl Hoax.
  
  In recent years, pranking has been officially encouraged by Tom Mannion, Caltech's Assistant VP for Student Affairs and Campus Life. "The grand old days of pranking have gone away at Caltech, and that's what we are trying to bring back," reported the Boston Globe.
  
  In December 2011, Caltech students went to New York and pulled a prank on Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The prank involved making The Cube sculpture look like the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube from the video game Portal.
  
  Caltech pranks have been documented in three Legends of Caltech books, the most recent of which was edited by alumni Autumn Looijen '99 and Mason A. Porter '98 and published in May 2007.
  

Alumni

Stephen Wolfram, PhD 1979, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha; one of the first MacArthur Fellows in 1981

Stanislav Smirnov, PhD 1996, 2010 Fields Medal winner for his work on the mathematical foundations of statistical physics, particularly finite lattice models