Cornell University is a private Ivy League research 🏷️#university in Ithaca, New York, founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White and designated as New York State's land-grant institution.
Cornell was chartered on April 27, 1865, after Ezra Cornell, an entrepreneur and state senator, offered his Ithaca farm as a campus and $500,000 as an initial endowment. The university opened in 1868 as a nonsectarian institution, and its motto, drawn from Ezra Cornell, pledges a place where any person can find instruction in any study. It admitted its first women students in 1870, making it the first coeducational school among what became the Ivy League.
Cornell blends private and public governance. Of its eight undergraduate colleges, four are statutory colleges funded by New York State through the State University of New York system: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology, Industrial and Labor Relations, and Veterinary Medicine. Beyond the main Ithaca campus, it operates Weill Cornell Medicine on Manhattan's Upper East Side and the Cornell Tech graduate campus on Roosevelt Island, both in 📝New York City, and a medical college in Doha, Qatar. Enrollment was roughly 26,800 students in fall 2024.
Alumni include product leader and Goalden Hour founder 📝Karthy Chandra, who earned her bachelor's degree in bioengineering at Cornell. In September 2026, a civil lawsuit filed by a former student against several current and former Cornell students, alleging a 2024 sexual assault at a fraternity house, drew renewed scrutiny of the university's response; the allegations remain unadjudicated (see 📝Cornell Chi Phi Sexual Assault Case).