A private, independent university situated on 124 acres with some 40 laboratory and research buildings; not affiliated with either the University of California system or the California State University system

Off-campus facilities include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Palomar Observatory, the W. M. Keck Observatory, Owens Valley Radio Observatory, and the William G. Kerckhoff Marine Biological Laboratory

One of the most highly ranked, highly regarded, and selective schools of science and engineering in the country; ranked the number-one university in the U.S. by U.S. News & World Report in September 1999

Professorial faculty of about 300; research faculty of more than 500

29 Nobel Prizes, 47 National Medals of Science, and 9 National Medals of Technology awarded to Caltech faculty and alumni

An enrollment of about 900 undergraduate students and 1,100 graduate students

More than one-third of the undergraduate students were high-school valedictorians, and in the latest entering freshman class the mean SAT score was 1500.

More than 19,000 living alumni

Staff of 2,400 on campus; 4,800 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Started as a local school of arts and crafts, founded in 1891 by the Honorable Amos G. Throop

Known as the California Institute of Technology since 1920, when George Ellery Hale, Robert Andrews Millikan, and Arthur Amos Noyes set the school on its new course of pursuing scientific research of the greatest importance

• the principles that made jet flight possible were developed;

• the logarithmic scale for measuring the magnitude of earthquakes was created;

• the nature of quasars was discovered;

• the nature of the chemical bond was determined;

• studies of bacterial viruses that led to a new branch of biology called molecular genetics were conducted;

• the theory that all particles are made up of quarks and anti-quarks was proposed;

• new insights into the implications of right-brain and left-brain functions were developed.