The White Coat Ceremony is a rite of passage that welcomes new medical and physician assistant students into the healthcare profession, usually near the start of training. It was founded in 1993 at Columbia University by Dr. Arnold P. Gold and the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. Students are "cloaked" in their first white coat by a faculty member and recite a professional oath, a tradition designed to place compassion and humanism at the center of medicine from day one. For most incoming students, the white coat is the first tangible symbol that years of preparation have paid off. It is also one of the newer traditions in medicine, and its story explains a lot about why that first coat carries so much weight.