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unitid 190415 · Ithaca, NY · private nonprofit 4-year · city (small)

Cornell University

Private university in Ithaca, New York, US

founded
1865
enrollment 2023
26,510
predominant degree
Bachelor's
motto
“I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study”
Campus of Cornell University

sach1tb · CC BY-SA 2.0

Cornell University is a private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson White in 1865. Since its founding, Cornell University has been a co-educational and nonsectarian institution. As of fall 2024, the student body included 16,128 undergraduate and 10,665 postgraduate students from all 50 U.S. states and 130 countries. wikipedia rev 1359506245 ↗

scorecard 2026-06 · percentiles within private nonprofit 4-years

The record

admission rate

9%

2nd pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

undergraduates

15,995

99th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

Pell share

18%

undergrads on Pell grants

17th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

completion

95%

finish within 150% time

97th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

sticker cost / yr

$88,140

99th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

avg net price / yr

$28,690

after aid, aided students

76th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

median earnings, 10 yr

$104,043

after entry, Title IV students

98th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

median grad debt

$14,000

8th pctl among private nonprofit 4-years

what families actually pay

Cost

Sticker price is a fiction for most families — net price is what aided students pay after grants, by family income.

Average net price by family income, 2023–24 aid cohort

Families earning under $30k paid $1,776 per year after aid.

Dashed hollow marks are privacy-suppressed brackets — not zero. Band: middle half of private nonprofit 4-years (all incomes).

Who enrolls, by family income

  • 0-30k
    21%
  • 30-48k
    12%
  • 48-75k
    not reported
  • 75-110k
    not reported
  • 110k+
    not reported
Median family income
$75,110
First-generation students
15%
In-state tuition & fees
$69,314

earnings · debt · programs

Outcomes

Median earnings after entry, working grads with federal aid

Ten years out, the median graduate earns 7.4× the median graduate debt.

Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only.

What programs pay — top fields of study

programgradsearn 5 yrdebt
Business Administration, Management and Operations.574$212,807—
Computer Science.507$219,827$14,698
Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods.403——
Computer Science.290$224,974—
Hospitality Administration/Management.290$98,785$13,987
Human Resources Management and Services.273$120,368$15,000
Agricultural Business and Management.254$130,690$13,258
Biology, General.254$69,997$16,000
Computer and Information Sciences, General.206$140,860$15,500
Legal Research and Advanced Professional Studies.193——
Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Other.176$85,225$13,465
Computer and Information Sciences, General.175——

— is privacy suppression at small programs, never zero. Earnings are median, 5 years after completing.

annual scorecard files, 1996–2026

Trajectory

Line breaks are years where the measure wasn't collected — a gap is not a zero.

Admission rate

Price per year

  • sticker
  • net

Median earnings, 10 yrs after entry

Undergraduates

wikidata · 12,395 people recorded

Memory

Wikidata is not an alumni census: a person appears only when volunteer editors record them. Counts measure the archive's memory - access x achievement x documentation - never placement rates or institutional quality.

Field fingerprint — share of recorded alumni by field

Women among recorded alumni, by birth decade

People without a recorded gender are excluded; decades with fewer than 5 recorded alumni are dropped.

Wikipedia attention

monthly article views since 2015

most recorded occupationsresearcher (3,638) · university teacher (1,682) · basketball player (594) · writer (498) · mathematician (381) · politician (366) · physicist (347) · economist (260)

Nobel laureates who studied here

  • Pearl S. Buck Literature 1938
  • Isidor Isaac Rabi Physics 1944
  • Hermann Joseph Muller Medicine 1946
  • John Mott Peace 1946
  • George Wells Beadle Medicine 1958
  • Robert W. Holley Medicine 1968
  • Sheldon Glashow Physics 1979
  • Steven Weinberg Physics 1979
  • Barbara McClintock Medicine 1983
  • Toni Morrison Literature 1993
  • Robert Fogel Economics 1993
  • Douglas Osheroff Physics 1996
  • Robert F. Engle Economics 2003
  • Jack Szostak Medicine 2009
  • William E. Moerner Chemistry 2014
  • Eric Betzig Chemistry 2014
  • David J. Thouless Physics 2016
  • Joachim Frank Chemistry 2017
  • Arthur Ashkin Physics 2018
  • Claudia Goldin Economics 2023

The portrait wall

Sized by nothing, ordered by Wikipedia footprint (language editions).

nearest neighbors in sector

Compare with peers

built 2026-07-17

Provenance

  • U.S. Dept. of Education College Scorecard, 2026-06 release. Earnings cover federally aided (Title IV) students only. Suppressed values are null, never imputed.
  • Annual Scorecard files 1996-2026. A null in early years usually means the measure was not yet collected, not zero.
  • Coordinates and locale describe the campus address, not where students live.
  • Wikidata is not an alumni census: a person appears only when volunteer editors record them. Counts measure the archive's memory - access x achievement x documentation - never placement rates or institutional quality.
  • Images are from Wikimedia Commons under free licenses. Render the credit line (artist + license) with every image.
  • Lead text from Wikipedia (revision 1359506245), CC BY-SA 4.0.