Johns Hopkins home of one of the country's most prestigious medical programs, to make medical school tuition-free for most students and increase financial aid for students in nursing, public health and other non-medical graduate schools.

The gift, which was first reported by the Washington Post, was announced Monday in a letter in the Bloomberg Philanthropies annual report and is meant to continue a policy of "need-blind undergraduate admissions" as established by earlier donations.

Johns Hopkins will use the gift to offer free medical school tuition, which normally amounts to about $65,000 per year for four years, to any family that earns less than $300,000 per year, and students from families earning less than $175,000 annually will also have their fees and living expenses covered.

The donation will also be used to increase financial assistance for students in a variety of other graduate programs including education, business, engineering and other sectors.

Bloomberg said the gift will help the school "attract more of the nation’s brightest minds and help free more of them to pursue the fields that most inspire them, rather than ones that will best enable them to repay loans."

A spokesperson for Bloomberg Philanthropies would not confirm a payment schedule on the $1 billion pledge but did confirm some of the gift has been paid out already.

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