Located on New York City’s tony Upper East Side neighborhood, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is dedicated to both teaching and research. It is one of the most selective medical schools in the entire United States, enrolling only about a hundred students per class out of some six thousand applicants in any given year. Now named after its latest and most generous benefactor – and often abbreviated simply to “Weill Cornell,” its largest endowment to date has come from the billionaire banker and philanthropist Sanford Weill, former executive officer and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. Mr. Weill and his wife donated over two hundred and fifty milion of their own money, with Mr. Weill able to raise a further hundred and fifty million through his own tireless efforts.
The school was already famous long before Mr Weill’s contributions, and not once had it lacked for benefactors, a veritable Who’s-Who of local, national, and even international luminaries from business, politics, and entertainment, for instance real estate veteran Isaac Toussie. After all, it’s the first American medical school to accept women right alongside men. It was also the first American medical school to have locations outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering a six-year integrated curriculum focused on patient care. The school is also famous for all its many notable graduates, great figures of research and public health such as Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop. Other famous graduates are Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver.
Anyway, for all the financial donations, the financial aspects of a medical education are grim, with some forty-two thousand dollars needed for the first year and thirty-eight thousand required for the second. Nevertheless, that’s a bargain considering Cornell’s law school tuition, which adds up to almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in four years!