Introduction to California Institute of Technology: California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is a prestigious university in the United States, located in Pasadena, California, founded in 1891. This school is not large in scale, with only more than 1,000 graduate students and more than 900 undergraduate students. However, it ranked second in the world in the 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings. In the fields of physics, planetary science, and geography, it is recognized as the first in the United States and the first in the world. In 2006, the American Princeton Review ranked Caltech sixth among the "most difficult universities to apply to" in the United States.