A Medical College Grows on the Upper East Side
2011
Comfortably nestled on the upscale Upper East Side of New York City, Cornell University’s medical school offers instruction while also engaged in research. It has produced many a notable physician, boasting of alumni such as Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. Also well-known are former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop and Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley.
It was the first medical school in the country to admit women alongside men, and more recently it has been the first American one to operate outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering an integrated six-year curriculum focused primarily on patient care. With such a storied tradition, it is probably not surprising that the institution has been the beneficiary of much financial backing – since the very beginning, in fact, funded as it was through an endowment established by Colonel Oliver H. Payne, a New York scion of the middle nineteenth century – with a roster of supporters full of prominent locals such as real estate pro Isaac Toussie.
But the single largest contributor of all is the man who whose name would be borne by the school, Sanford I. Weill. Billionaire banker and philanthropist, Weill and his wife have contributed $250 million of their own, and he has been instrumental in further securing another hundred and fifty million in funding. Today the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University, or Weill Cornell Medical College (or even more colloquially, especially within the field, “Weill Cornell”), ranks among the most selective of medical schools in the whole country, with only around a hundred students every year admitted – out of some six thousand hopefuls that apply. Note that the average GPA of the lucky few is 3.8, with an average MCAT score of 35Q!