of Medicine was admitted as a member of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) in 1904. In addition to IUSM in Bloomington, IU's leaders wanted to locate medical training facilities in Indianapolis. Their initial plan was to provide medical students with the first two years of coursework at Bloomington and the final two years at Indianapolis, where students would receive clinically-based training as part of their studies. Prior to 1908, due primarily to the high cost of establishing its own medical facilities in Indianapolis, IU attempted to merge with existing medical schools, but the effort was unsuccessful. Rivalry with Purdue University The current school in Indianapolis is a mixture of several earlier medical colleges. In 1869, the Medical College of Indiana opened in Indianapolis. This institution would associate with IU from 1871 to 1876. In 1879 two more medical schools opened—the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons in Indianapolis and the Fort Wayne College of Medicine. After the school of medicine in Bloomington was founded in 1903 formal negotiations opened between IU and the Medical College of Indiana to merge the schools; however, the IU trustees failed to ratify the Medical College of Indiana's proposal, and by 1904 the matter was indefinitely abandoned. While negotiations were ongoing between IU and the Medical College of Indiana, representatives from the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons approached Purdue University's medical department in West Lafayette, which was established circa 1900, to arrange a similar union. In May 1905 the Medical College of Indiana submitted the same proposal ("...to give its property and assets of an appraised value of $100,000 to the University, and to accompany the gift by its good will and the gratuitous services of its faculty; the motive being to permanently establish a medical college of high order in connection with an educational institution of good standing.") that had failed ratification with IU to Purdue's trustees. The trustees took the proposal into consideration, and were "convinced that the conditions were unusually favorable to the consummation of a union of interests where all previous efforts had failed, and to the inauguration of a progressive educational movement of great value to the State." By September the proposal was accepted subject to the approval of the state legislature, and the Medical College of Indiana became part of Purdue University with the full title of the Indiana Medical College, the School of Medicine of