Cornell University
private and statutory land-grant research university in Ithaca, New York, USA
Cornell University ( korr-NEHL) 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.
The university is organized into eight undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions on its main Ithaca campus. Each college and academic division has near autonomy in defining its respective admission standards and academic curriculum. In addition to its primary campus in Ithaca, Cornell University administers three satellite campuses, including two in New York City, the medical school and Cornell Tech, and a branch of the medical school in Al Rayyan in Education City, Qatar.
Cornell is one of three private land-grant universities in the United States. Among the university's 20 colleges and schools, some are state-supported statutory or contract colleges partly financed by the State of New York through the State University of New York. These include the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the College of Human Ecology, and the Industrial and Labor Relations School, and one of the graduate divisions of the Veterinary Medicine College.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cornell University” as private and statutory land-grant research university in Ithaca, New York, USA. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as private and statutory land-grant research university in Ithaca, New York, USA. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q49115. VIAF identifies the subject as 126293486. The Library of Congress control number is n79021621. Authority coordinates are 42.449, -76.484. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1865 and 2024.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Cornell University”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Cornell University primary sources, Cornell University archive and Cornell research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cornell University”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Cornell University” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.