| I'm a grad student in Materials Science. I don't know how many grad students work at JPL, though my girlfriend did interview there earlier this year for a job. She said most people there have a Masters degree, and there weren't as many PhDs as she thought there would be.
I finished CMU with around a 3.6-3.7 and a semester early. Summer of freshman year I worked in a local company's R&D labs, sophomore summer I worked for a professor at CMU, and junior summer I got an REU at UC Irvine. I know all of my recommendations were pretty top-notch since I did really good work for all three people that wrote me recommendations. I got a 620 Verbal, 730 Math, and 5.5 on Writing for the GREs. I don't think I would have gotten into the physics graduate program here, because that one is considerably more competitive (nor would I have wanted to, since I like MSE and not physics!).
I think JPL does a lot more applied research than most groups here at Caltech seem to do, as they're actually building satellites and doing stuff, while most other groups here seem to be very involved in theoretical work. | 
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