Samuel Woo, a first-year student, was thinking about going into cardiology so he could pay off his medical school debt, but last week he learned that his New York City school will no longer charge tuition thanks to a kind contribution.
The 23-year-old, whose parents emigrated from South Korea, announced on Tuesday that he can now afford to follow his passion for giving homeless people access to healthcare without worrying about accruing heavy college debt.
“It changes a lot and I was very emotional,” Woo, who had been working as a tutor and at a cafe to help pay his expenses, said.
Ruth Gottesman, the widow of a Wall Street billionaire and a former professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said on Monday that she is giving $1 billion to the Bronx-based institution. Four-year students will benefit immediately from the donation, while the rest of the student body will start to profit in the fall.
Laptops 1000Jade Andrade, a first-year student whose parents moved to rural Virginia from the Philippines, experienced a similar response.
Andrade remarked, “I just felt a huge wave of relief come over me and everyone around me in the auditorium.”
Both students expressed the hope that more low-income students from immigrant families who otherwise could not have been able to afford to pursue a career in medicine would be able to do so because of Gottesman’s kind donation.
In addition to being the largest donation to a U.S. medical school, the school’s location in one of the most impoverished areas of the state and city of New York is another noteworthy aspect of the donation, according to Montefiore Einstein, the organization that unites Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Montefiore Health System.
“There are people in the Bronx who are first-generation, low-income students who truly want to practice medicine and become doctors, but they just aren’t able to have the opportunity, due to lack of resources or financial issues,” Woo stated. “I hope that the free tuition will ease some of those students’ burdens and inspire them to consider medicine as a potentially respectable career.”
Laptops 1000Andrade, thirty, described the news as emancipating.
There are very few life decisions that you make as an immigrant’s child without considering the financial implications, such as whether or not it’s a worthwhile use of your time. Can I afford to do this? I want to do this,” she remarked.
However, “anyone can dream bigger” if the financial pressure is removed.
When 93-year-old Gottesman revealed her gift, shocked teachers and pupils stood up, applauding and even crying in some cases. She is the chair of the college’s board of trustees and has been associated with it for fifty-five years.
School administrators stated that while they have no plans to alter their admissions process, they believed that offering free tuition would draw in a varied pool of students. They claimed that because the lump money will increase due to interest generated, the donation should be made indefinitely. The free tuition will be available to all students.
The institution presently charges $63,000 in tuition per year, which leaves graduating students with enormous debt that may take decades to pay off. According to the Education Data Initiative, medical graduates typically have $202,453 in debt when they graduate.
Generous donations have also benefited other schools, some of which are located in clearly richer communities.
The NYU Grossman School of Medicine received a $100 million donation from Kenneth and Elaine Langone in 2018. The money was allocated to an endowment fund, which would cover all medical students’ tuition costs going forward. Furthermore, Langone endowed a full-tuition scholarship program at NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine in 2023, ensuring that all medical students will receive free tuition. This donation totaled $200 million. One of the co-founders of Home Depot is Kenneth Langone.
Merit-based scholarships are available at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, made possible by the recording industry tycoon’s around $146 million in gifts.
Gottesman acknowledged that she had the money to donate to her late husband, David “Sandy” Gottesman, who had left her such. David Gottesman was on the board of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and founded the Wall Street investment firm First Manhattan. Aged 96, he passed away in 2022.
Gottesman, a pioneer in the field of learning impairments, stated, “I feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such a worthy cause.”
Woo claimed that as soon as the announcement was made, he called his mother.
“I think she asked me a lot of questions because that’s what parents of immigrants do,” he remarked. “But she was thrilled when I told her later that I would no longer be paying for tuition.”
