Weill Cornell and Medical Instruction in America
Located within one of the richest zip codes in the entire United States, Cornell University’s medical school offers instruction while also engaged in research. The school can brag about quite a few luminaries among its alumni, with famous names like 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. Such a respected institution has benefited from the generous support of donors throughout its history – indeed, the school was founded through an endowment funded 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.
Still, the one biggest benefactor of all has got to be the one whose name now graces the school itself, Sanford I. Weill. A banker and philanthropist, Mr. Weill and his wife donated two hundred and fifty million dollars of their own money, 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”), 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. Note that the average GPA of the lucky few is 3.8, with an average MCAT score of 35Q!