Caltech overcame its East Coast counterpart, MIT, coming in at second in the world in the Times rankings. Like MIT, Caltech got a near-perfect score for the number of times its published work is cited by academics. Caltech alumni include movie director Frank Capra; former faculty include Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman (himself an MIT graduate).
The QS list ranked Caltech No. 9 in 2010 and No. 10 in 2009.