A Bronx medical school will become tuition-free thanks to a massive donation.

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx said free tuition is possible because of a “transformational gift” from Ruth Gottesman, chair of the Einstein Board of Trustees and Montefiore Health System board member, according to a news release. 

“This historic gift – the largest made to any medical school in the country – will ensure that no student at Einstein will have to pay tuition again,” the release said. 

According to the release, the free tuition plan will begin in August for all students moving forward. All current fourth-year students will also be reimbursed their current spring semester tuition because of the donation, according to the release.

“With this gift, Dr. Gottesman will fund excellence in perpetuity and secure our foundational mission of advancing human health,” Dr. Philip Ozuah, president and CEO of Montefiore Einstein, wrote in a statement.

The donation aims to draw the interest of students who “may not otherwise have the means to pursue a medical education,” the release said. 

Tuition at Einstein is $59,458 per year. The average medical school debt in the U.S. is $202,453, excluding undergraduate debt, according to the Education Data Initiative.

Gottesman joined Einstein’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center in 1968 and developed screening and treatments for learning problems. She started the first-of-its-kind Adult Literacy Program at the center in 1992, and in 1998 was named the founding director of the Emily Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning Disabilities at CERC. She is clinical professor emerita of pediatrics at Einstein.

Through their foundation, the Gottesman Fund, the family has supported charities in Israel and within the U.S. Jewish community, especially through gifts to schools, universities and New York City's American Museum of Natural History.

Einstein becomes the second tuition-free medical school in New York. In 2018, New York University School of Medicine announced that it would cover the tuition of all its students.