Top Tech Schools: MIT or Caltech?

Both MIT and Caltech are well known as leading tech schools and are particularly strong in the science and technology fields. Thanks to its prestigious Sloan School of Management, MIT also has a strong international reputation for social sciences and business-related courses. 

These strengths are reflected in the QS World University Rankings by Subject, which is based upon academic reputation, employer reputation and research citations. 

Caltech doesn’t have quite such a strong all-round performance, though it still performs well across all the broad subject areas.

As you can see in the table below, MIT boasts many first-place rankings and features in a broader range of subjects than Caltech.

Both top tech schools are in small university towns within easy reach of a major city. MIT is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a university town of under 150,000 inhabitants. This town is also home to Harvard University – making it one of the world’s most prestigious hubs of academic tuition and research. Cambridge is close to Boston, one of the most culturally vibrant and historic cities in the Northeast US.

Around 3,000 miles away, Caltech is in the Californian city of Pasadena, a university town of a similar size to Cambridge, and a stone’s throw from the second-largest city in the US, Los Angeles. 

One of the major bragging points for Caltech students over their north-eastern rivals is the climate – southern California enjoys sunshine and warmth all year round, while MIT students get hot summers but freezing winters. Then again, a little seasonal variation is not necessarily a bad thing, and the New England region is famed worldwide for its beautiful autumn colours. 

Though both top tech schools are on the smaller side for world-class universities, MIT’s 11,520-strong student body makes it roughly five times the size of Caltech’s 2,231. Both institutions have a greater number of postgraduates than undergraduates, reflecting their research-intensive focus. 

Well-established among the world’s top tech schools, both attract applications from talented students all around the world, leading to highly diverse student bodies. International students account for nearly a third of enrolments at both MIT and Caltech.  

At Caltech, the proportion of international students is much higher among graduate students compared to undergraduate level.