To ensure that every student who aspires to become a doctor can do so, in 2019, The Starr Foundation committed $90 million to help provide a 100% debt-free education to all Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) students with demonstrated financial need.
Historically, more than half of the students at WCM have taken out loans to pay for their medical education, but with tuition and living expenses totaling an average of $90,000 a year, a medical degree is increasingly out of reach—especially for first-generation college graduates, students from low-income families, and underrepresented minorities.
WCM’s ambitious program—which replaces student loans with scholarships that cover tuition, housing, and other living expenses—was spearheaded by longtime Starr Foundation Chair Maurice R. Greenberg, with support from other donors. The Foundation made the lead gift—the single largest in the Foundation’s history—to help WCM increase equity in health care and diversify its student body.
In 2020, the year that the WCM debt-free financial aid program launched, there was an 11% increase in applications to WCM, with nearly three quarters of those from students who qualified for debt-free financial aid. In 2023, four years after the program’s launch, the number of incoming students from historically underrepresented communities had risen 27% over the preprogram baseline.
“Having less debt, I feel totally comfortable pursuing a field that may not be as lucrative as some of the sub-specialties but is what I truly love.”
WCM’s Dr. Hector Mora
Dr. Mora, an immigrant from Chile and the first person in his immediate family to go to college, said he decided to go into internal medicine because of the long-term relationships he could form with patients and the opportunity to treat a wide range of conditions.
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