Finally, in 1865, after a long battle in the state legislature, the charter was granted. The institution survived its early ridicule and has since flourished as one of the nation's leading universities and a member of the Ivy League.

Cornell University is the fulfillment of the dreams of two contrasting individuals: Ezra Cornell, an adventurous businessman who, with little education, made his fortune in the Western Union Telegraph Company; and Andrew Dickson White, an intellectual from a well-to-do family in Homer, New York, who had studied at Geneva (now Hobart) College and Yale University. White, convinced that the liberal education of the nineteenth century was not meeting the technical demands of the industrial revolution, and Cornell, driven by the desire to provide for more practical education, including a manual-labor program, were both eager to found a university with fresh ideas. They united their efforts, using land-grant funds available to New York State through the Morrill Act.

White toyed with the idea of building the school on a lower section of East Hill, but Cornell had majestic dreams of a university soaring on a hilltop "far above Cayuga's waters." Cornell prevailed, and a site was chosen on his beautiful farm. It offered a breathtaking view, although the climb from Ithaca was no joy.

At the age of thirty-four, Andrew Dickson White became the university's first president, and wasted no time in collecting a first-rate faculty. That was far from easy, because Cornell University, with its support of science and combination of state and private financing, was seen as revolutionary. The drive was capped when Goldwin Smith, a highly respected historian, joined the faculty. Cornell University soon became a respected educational institution.

The university was committed from the beginning to educating women, and the first female student entered in the fall of 1870. But since there were no accommodations for women on the campus, she had to climb the hill each day from her lodgings in Ithaca. She quit the university when winter arrived. Three women entered in the fall of 1871, one of whom, in June 1873, became Cornell's first female graduate. In February 1872 an announcement that the trustees had accepted Henry W. Sage's offer of $250,000 to construct a dormitory building for women brought a flurry of applications and the enrollment of sixteen female students in the fall. Sage College opened in 1875 with thirty female residents.

Most of the male undergraduates were hostile to coeducation at the university. They feared it would impede Cornell's acceptance as an institution equal to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Goldwin Smith worried that "subjecting women to the rigors of competitive examinations might make them unmarriageable." Nonetheless, by fall 1899, three hundred sixty-seven female students were enrolled in the university. Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose were appointed full professors in the Department of Home Economics in 1911.

By the 1890s there were several African American Cornellians. The first bachelor's degrees to African American students at the university were awarded in 1897 and 1898. In 1906, Alpha Phi Alpha, the first national college fraternity for African Americans, was founded in Ithaca by seven Cornell students.

The university has had strong international ties from its very beginning; several international students entered in the first class. There are now more than twenty-six hundred international students at Cornell, from more than one hundred twenty countries.

Cornell awarded the nation's first degree in veterinary medicine, first doctoral degree in electrical engineering, and first doctoral degree in industrial engineering. It established the first four-year schools of hotel administration and of industrial and labor relations and endowed the nation's first chairs in American literature, musicology, and American history. By 1913 the diversity of Cornell's fields of study had attracted more than five thousand students, making the university the second-largest school in the nation.

Graduate study has been a part of the Cornell curriculum since the founding of the university. Cornell was one of the first institutions of higher education in the United States to offer advanced degrees. The Cornell Register for the academic year 1868-69 described requirements for four advanced degrees: M.S., M.A., Ph.D., and an advanced degree in civil engineering. Cornell awarded an M.S. degree in civil engineering in 1870 to Henry Turner Eddy, who also became Cornell's first Ph.D. in 1872, amazingly just seven years after the founding of the university. At that time there were fewer than two hundred graduate students in the United States. Although Yale awarded a Ph.D. degree in 1861, Harvard did not until 1873. Columbia followed in 1875; Michigan, in 1876.

For Cornell's first forty years the faculty dealt with issues of graduate study directly, assigning committees to review residency and language requirements, courses of study, and credit for study at other schools. A standing committee was appointed in 1879 to review applications. In 1896 the trustees reorganized the university into separate faculties, one of which was the Graduate Department, later, in 1909, to become the Graduate School.

The early years of the Graduate School laid a firm foundation and established patterns for the future. The faculty delegated the administration of procedural matters to the Graduate School without losing control over admission decisions, requirements for graduation, and curriculum planning. The tradition of a Special Committee for each graduate student began. The committee was composed of faculty members representing the student's field of study and ruled as final arbiter on all questions regarding the awarding of the degree. The Special Committee system represents a belief in academic freedom that continues to attract outstanding graduate students to Cornell.

Early in its history, graduate students at Cornell and elsewhere began to organize clubs, which eventually became the Federation of Graduate Clubs. By 1895 the federation included clubs from twenty-one schools across the country. They studied the serious issues of American graduate education, published their findings, held conventions, and ultimately paved the way for the formation of the American Association of Universities, of which Cornell is a charter member.