Leaders at Cornell University have high hopes for the college experience of incoming freshmen, thanks to a $100-million gift from an anonymous donor, the New York Times reports.

The money will be used to build housing for undergraduates, allowing Cornell to concentrate on making dormitories a complete part of the learning experience. The university will use the dormitories for such academic pursuits as seminars, following the examples set by fellow Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Yale.

New dormitories will be built on Cornell's North Campus, allowing all freshmen to live together in first-year housing on the same campus. By doing so, the school hopes to more fully integrate minority and white students, the Times reports. Until now, minority students had mainly lived on the school's North Campus, while white students congregated on the West Campus.

The gift will cover about half of the cost of the new dormitories. It is the second $100-million gift Cornell has received, coming on the heels of last year's gift by Sanford and Joan Weill to the university's medical school.

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