Caltech Named Best Research University for Undergrads in 2022

The California Institute of Technology has been named by AcademicInfluence.com as the Best Research University for Undergrads in 2022 in its latest university rankings, which incorporates rankings for both leading higher education institutions in the world and the best schools in the United States.

Caltech ranked No. 1 in four categories in the 2022 rankings released Wednesday: Best Private Colleges and Universities for Undergrads, Best U.S. Colleges and Universities for Undergrads, Best Research Universities for Undergrads in the U.S., and Best Small Colleges and Universities in the U.S.

Caltech’s student body numbers about 2,248. Of this number, 917 are taking undergraduate courses, and 1,337 are currently enrolled in graduate courses, according to the rankings report.

The university is known for its strength in science and engineering, and is among a small group of institutes of technology in the U.S. that are primarily devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.

An article posted on the AcademicInfluence.com website said Caltech was originally founded as a vocational school, but took on the complexion of an institute at the cutting edge of scientific discovery quite early in its history.

The article also mentioned a number of science and technology luminaries who were part of the institute at one time or another.

They include Alfred Amos Noyes who moved from MIT, where he had been serving as acting-President, to Caltech in 1919, and was responsible for revising the science curriculum in line with the latest advances in Germany, whose universities were the best in the world at that time; distinguished astronomer George Ellery Hale, who discovered that sunspots produce magnetic fields; and the outstanding physicist Robert A. Millikan, who moved to Caltech in 1921 from the University of Chicago and won the Nobel Prize two years later for devising his classic “oil-drop experiment” to measure the strength of the elementary charge of the electron.

Hungarian-born physicist and aeronautical engineer Theodore von Kármán, who arrived in Pasadena in 1930, was also part of Caltech; he went on to found what eventually became the world-famous Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Astrophysicist Allan Sandage, one of the most influential astronomers of the 20th century and the first person to come up with a good estimate for the value of the Hubble constant, obtained his PhD at Caltech and was a graduate student assistant to cosmologist Edwin Hubble.

AcademicInfluence.com said it is comprised of a team of academics and data scientists working to provide “an objective, non-gameable, influence-based ranking” for the people, schools, and disciplinary programs that make up higher education. The group’s aim is to “identify and foster what’s best in higher education,” according to their website. The online resource is a technology-driven, academic rankings site dedicated to students, researchers, and inquirers from high school through college and beyond.

“These institutions of higher learning continue to have a global and national impact due to the standout quality of their faculty, staff, and alumni,” Dr. Jed Macosko, academic director of AcademicInfluence.com, said. “Students who want to change the world can start with an education at any one of these top schools.”

AcademicInfluence.com uses its proprietary InfluenceRanking engine – a machine-learning technology that measures a school’s influence through its students, faculty, staff, and alumni – in its rankings. The engine also analyzes massive data sources, such as Wikipedia, Crossref, and Semantic Scholar, and creates a map of academic influence that provides students with trustworthy ranking results.

For more detailed information about the rankings, visit www.academicinfluence.com/rankings/schools/best-colleges-universities#california-institute-technology.