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A medical student has claimed his neighborhood, and the humble background of public high school led to him being ‘snobbed’ at one of Australia’s most prestigious universities.
The experience was so humbling that Fahad said it nearly drove him to give up on his dream of becoming a doctor.
In a TikTok video, which has nearly 50,000 likes, third-year medical student Fahad Khan recalled his experience attending the University of Sydney Open Day as a 12-year-old student from western Sydney in 2016.
Captioned “Getting snobbed at @USyd Open Day as a person from Western Sydney,” Fahad said the first thing he did was go to the drug information session.
“I saw there were two medical students, I think, and about 10 years 12 students with them,” Fahad says.
“As I got close to them, I heard them talking about things like, ‘Does Mr. X still teach math and Mrs. X still do it?’
“And they all laughed and I went, ‘Look, they’re all buddies, that’s pretty nice.'”
The caption on the TikTok video changes to “This is why I believe there are parts of USyd with a toxic selective/private school culture,” as Fahad describes trying to join the conversation.
“I tried to say hello and they ignored me,” he says.
“And then I’ll say it again… I say ‘Hi, my name is Fahad’.
Fahad says he was “completely humiliated” by the experience of being snubbed at a University of Sydney medical studies information session for not attending the same schools as everyone else there
“And they all turned around and they looked at me and then they looked away and one of the medical students said ‘oh, hello’.
“And then they all started talking about their high school again and I said, ‘What the hell? They just kind of ignored me,” Fahad says.
‘But I said ‘You know what? The session starts in five minutes, maybe this is just a group of friends and fair enough if they want to talk to their friends before they start talking to everyone, that’s fine.”
However, things didn’t improve when the session started.
“The first question they asked was, ‘What high school did everyone go to?’ Fahad says.
‘Most of them were James Ruse students, there were some Sydney Boys [High] and Sydney Girls.
In his TikTok video, Fahad says there is a ‘toxic selective/private school culture’ at Sydney University
A number of people reported having similar experiences to Fahad at the University of Sydney
“I was the only student in a non-selective non-private school.”
Fahad describes what happened next as “unbelievable.”
He said everyone from the selective and private schools was taken to one side of the room to talk to the medical students, while he was left alone on the other side.
‘I asked them ‘Am I coming? Am I involved in that too?’
“And the medical student turned to me and he said, ‘Oh, there’s a third medical student coming, you’re hanging out with that person’ and I was like, ‘What the hell?’
Those who commented on Fahad’s TikTok video showed that his experience was far from unique
The third medical student never showed up.
Fahad decided he was going to “force” himself into the experience.
“So I went there and I sat with them, and I forced myself to sit with them and do what they were doing,” Fahad says.
“And I’m not kidding you for the entire 100 percent of the session where they talked about their high school inside jokes.
Every time I asked a question like, ‘How was the first year? How was the second year?’ they were like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s alright’.
“Then they looked away and started talking about their high school again and I thought, ‘What the hell is going on with these people?’.”
Fahad said the experience was crushing.
A TikTok user, who said they worked in college, expressed disgust at the story
“I remember leaving that session completely humiliated,” he says.
“When I thought on the train home, I thought about how my peers at school would laugh at me when I said I wanted to be a doctor and they just said to me ‘you know some dreams are out of reach’.
“That day almost made me believe I couldn’t become a doctor.”
The university has been contacted for comment.
On its website, Sydney University says that ‘welcoming is part of our culture’.
‘We are committed to a range of activities to ensure that everyone is accepted and given equal opportunities when it comes to education and employment at our university’, the university writes under the heading ‘Diversity’.
The comments below the video made it clear that Fahad’s experience was not unique.
“I went through usyd med as one of the few non-selective/publicly educated/low SES students and it was so isolating to have so many privileges,” one wrote.
“Usyd was so toxic, I was transferred there my second year of college and the vast majority of people looked down on me because of the area I came from,” said another.
“Definitely a superiority complex of many students at usyd,” wrote another.
“They won’t go too far. I’m going to usyd and I swear med sci kids always love this!’
Fahad’s story touched at least one person who claimed to be associated with the university.
“From someone who works at USYD, I’m really sorry you had to go through this man. It was heartbreaking to watch,” they wrote.