Admission & Waiting List

Parents who wish to apply for admission are encouraged to make an appointment to tour the Center. Applications for the wait list are available in the office or online at https://ccc.caltech.edu/. Upon receipt of the application, the child’s name is added to the wait list. Caltech, JPL and our own Center staff families are added to the Caltech affiliates wait list. Within the wait list, siblings of children already at the center receive priority. As openings occur, age-appropriate children are selected from the wait list based on application date to fill any vacancy in a class. Tenured and tenured track Caltech professorial faculty will ordinarily have priority over all other groups on the waiting list. Center staff and families with currently enrolled siblings may also be given priority. There is also a separate Community wait list for applicants who are not affiliated.

The Children’s Center at Caltech supports the value of inclusion—the right of all children, regardless of their diverse abilities, to participate actively in natural settings with their peers. At the Children’s Center, this means that we will, on a provisional basis, accept children with special needs who meet the waiting list criteria stated above. Depending on the nature and extent of the disability, continued enrollment will depend on frequent and on-going staff-parent communication, and on careful and continuous assessment of the viability of the arrangement for all concerned.