Cornell University was founded in turbulent times. With the Civil War winding down, and less than two weeks after President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the Governor of New York signed the school’s official charter in the state capital, Albany, where only the day before Lincoln’s funeral procession had passed through the city’s streets.
Two men were behind the drive to establish a first-class university in upstate New York: wealthy businessman Ezra Cornell, the founder of Western Union, who was originally from Ithaca (where the new school was to be located), and Andrew Dickson White, a prominent historian and educator, who hailed from nearby Syracuse. Later on, White would be best remembered as the author of A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), and from the beginning he envisioned Cornell as a rigorously secular institution with a special emphasis on the natural sciences.
This lack of an original religious orientation, as well as its geographical isolation from the American center of cultural gravity on the East Coast, make Cornell a bit of an odd-man-out among the eight schools that make up the Ivy League. However, the university’s right to a place among that elite grouping is more than justified by the intellectual firepower of its faculty. Moreover, despite its rural setting, Cornell’s sprawling campus and its total university population of over 23,000 (more than twice the size of the town of Ithaca itself) easily make it a rival of the other Ivy League schools in scale.
One of Cornell’s areas of particular strength is medicine. The Weill Cornell Medical School, located in Manhattan, is one of the most selective in the nation. Cornell also runs the Weill Cornell Medical College located in Doha, Qatar.
An astonishing 50 Nobel laureates are connected with Cornell, not to mention many other highly influential thinkers and authors. For example, among Nobel Prize– winners in physics, we many mention:
Cornell-connected chemistry Nobelists include:
In physiology or medicine, we may mention:
Four Cornell-connected economists have won the Nobel Prize in their field:
No fewer than four Nobel Prize laureates in literature have studied or taught at Cornell:
However, perhaps the most distinguished of all Cornell-connected literary figures (and one of the Swedish Academy’s worst oversights) is the great Russian émigré novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, who taught here from 1948 until 1959, when the international succès de scandale of his novel Lolita (1955) permitted him to retire from teaching.
Among other distinguished Cornell-connected individuals (in addition to the above), we may mention:
According to Wikipedia, Cornell University is a private Ivy League and statutory land-grant research university, based in Ithaca, New York. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics to the sciences, and from the theoretical to the applied. These ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's founding principle, a popular 1868 quotation from founder Ezra Cornell: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study."
| Annual Applications | Acceptance | Graduation Rate | Median SAT Score | Median ACT Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 51,500 | 11% | 95% | 1480 | 33 |
| Tuition (in-state) |
|---|
| $61,015 |
| Income | Average Net Cost |
|---|---|
| 0 - 30K | $7,484 |
| 30K - 48K | $7,518 |
| 48K - 75K | $11,869 |
| 75K - 110K | $23,128 |
| 110K+ | $55,817 |
If you graduate from Cornell University, then you can expect to earn an average of $101,200 per year. You also have a 92% chance of being employed after 10 years.
Demographic data is for full-time, on-campus students.
| Student Body | Under-Grads | Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| 25,624 | 16,205 | 9,419 |
Cornell University is located at 300 Day Hall, Ithaca NY 14853
Cornell University has a violent crime rate of less than .01% and a property crime rate of less than .01%. Ithaca has a violent crime rate of less than .01% and a property crime rate of less than .01%.
Cornell University is known for it's academic work in the following disciplines:
Cornell University's most influential alumni faculty include professors and professionals in the fields of Computer Science, Engineering, and Physics. Here are some of Cornell University's most famous alumni:
