Long before medical school applications are even submitted, students are already navigating what it means to be pre-medical, or ‘pre-med.’ That label tends to stick early, and people start making decisions around it before they even fully know what it entails. Cornell’s pre-med culture lives in two different worlds at once.
It’s often held as hyper-competitive. We assume students are hiding notes, giving incorrect answers to each other, doing whatever it takes to get ahead. Classes like organic chemistry and biochemistry are the most notorious, designed in a way to make students second-guess medical school aspirations and view others in the room as competition in the context of a curve.
But when you actually sit down and talk to students on the pre-med track, the picture starts to feel a lot less dramatic, and honestly, a lot more confusing.
According to one student I spoke with, Aisha Arshad ’27, a professor in a biochemistry class had to stop instruction to address what looked to be cheating. Too many students were submitting answers that seemed very similar. Arshad explained, “[The professor] had to tell us, like, ‘don’t use AI, this isn’t okay.’”
I asked whether the pressure leads to students trying to take advantage of each other. “It wasn’t like people were trying to sabotage each other,” Arshad told me. “It was more like … we’re all just trying to survive this class.”
That line stuck with me, because it comes up in different ways across all conversations.
There is behavior in the pre-med student culture that resembles worry more than competitiveness. This can be discussing class material and sharing notes or working through difficult class content in a group.
And then there are students who just don’t see it that way at all.
Emily Rambo ’28 is pretty clear that the culture, at least for them, isn’t toxic. “If we want to be doctors, we can’t cheat,” they said, as if it was obvious. For Rambo, the hardest part about surviving pre-med at Cornell isn’t the competition with other students, it is just the material. “It’s intense,” Rambo said about organic chemistry, “but not really a nightmare.”
Rambo kept coming back to collaboration — not in some idealized way, but practically. You share something small, someone else shares something in return, and suddenly you know about a research lab or a program you wouldn’t have discovered on your own. Depending on who you talk to, Cornell’s pre-med track either feels collaborative or competitive, and sometimes both at the same time. A lot of it comes down to your circle.
This notion was confirmed by Rambo: “I think it really depends who you know.” With close friends, things feel easy. People send each other templates for cold emails, talk through classes and help each other figure out next steps. There’s a sense that you’re not doing this alone.
Interestingly, a lot of the pressure people described didn’t actually come from their coursework. It came from beyond the classroom.
Clubs are one example. Getting into pre-health organizations can feel like an intense process in itself: “You have to go through gazillions of interviews,” Rambo said, half laughing. “And even then, there’s no guarantee. You can prepare, put in the effort and still get rejected.”
It’s not always toxic exactly, but it can feel overwhelming, especially early on in your college career. Rambo described being in an interview where they were asked multiple times about not having a research position yet. “I just transferred here,” they said. “I’m doing it one step at a time.” It wasn’t the rejection that stuck with them — it was the feeling of being behind before they had really even started.
That’s where the competition shows up more clearly. Not in people actively trying to bring each other down, but in this constant sense of comparison.
Sometimes it’s subtle. Sarvin Bhagwagar ’28 told me about a friend asking for their grade in a class. Bhagwagar had done well, but didn’t want to say it. “I just said I did okay,” Bhagwagar admitted. It wasn’t a big moment, but it says something about how aware people are of how everyone else is doing. Since many students in the life sciences are considering medical school, it is unsurprising that classmates are interested in knowing how they stack up with their peers.
At the same time, most people I spoke with refrained from calling the culture toxic. Competitive, yes. Stressful, definitely. But also manageable, and in some cases, supportive. Cornell’s pre-med culture isn’t as crazy as people first made me believe it to be. It’s more like a mix of environments that you move through. Some spaces feel collaborative. Others feel like you’re constantly being evaluated. And sometimes those things overlap in ways that don’t make a lot of sense until you’re in it.
The idea that it’s entirely cutthroat simply doesn’t hold up, but the idea that it’s purely collaborative doesn’t either.
The Cornell pre-med experience falls somewhere in between, much like other pre-professional experiences, and it is up to students to surround themselves with the right people and have the right attitude to succeed.
Sahil Raut is a junior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He can be reached at ssr247@cornell.edu.
