Engineering at California Institute of Technology

Caltech is one of the world's premier engineering schools, yet the estimated earnings here—$68,000 based on national medians—fall dramatically short of what peer California engineering programs actually report. Harvey Mudd graduates earn $92,000, while UC Davis reports $83,000. The state median for engineering sits at $88,000. This discrepancy matters because if Caltech's actual outcomes track closer to its California peers (as you'd expect from a 3% admit rate institution), the financial picture improves considerably. If they align with these estimates, something would be notably amiss.

The estimated debt of $26,000 appears reasonable and manageable against even the lower earnings figure, yielding a 0.39 ratio. But the real consideration here isn't whether Caltech engineering is affordable—it's whether these estimates bear any resemblance to reality for an institute that competes directly with MIT and Stanford. The small graduate sample triggering data suppression (Caltech awards roughly 200 bachelor's degrees annually, total) makes these national-median-based estimates particularly unreliable for gauging outcomes at this specific institution.

Your best move: contact Caltech's career services directly for their actual placement data. They track where graduates go and what they earn. The estimates suggest financial viability, but they're likely understating outcomes at an institution of this caliber by $15,000-25,000 annually. For a school this selective and specialized, rely on institutional data rather than statistical proxies.