University rules that nobody bothers to explain

I once had a friend at university who was exceptionally intelligent. She went on to complete a Masters and a PhD in biomedical sciences and eventually became a lecturer and researcher. But that isn't where her story began. She started out studying medicine at one of the oldest and most elite universities in Scotland.

Most of her peers on that programme had come through the United Kingdom's elite private schools. As far as she could tell, she was the only student who did not come from a professional family background. Many of her peers had parents who were doctors, surgeons, lawyers and the like, and they arrived at medical school already a step ahead in the game of higher education. This ‘step ahead’ advantage has less to do with being clever, and more to do with knowing how to play the game.

I should clarify that those students from privileged backgrounds didn't realise they were ahead. This is not a story about blaming eighteen-year-olds trying to forge a career. But it needs to be said, they were fluent in a particular language that nobody had formally explained. My friend was not.

My friend’s parents were not professionals. They were not wealthy. She came from a solid working-class background. And she was bright, driven, and more than capable of meeting the intellectual demands of a medical degree. What she struggled with was not the science. It was the system.

She didn't instinctively understand what and how to prioritise her studies. How to navigate the bureaucracy of a medical programme, how to engage with professors, or how to perform competence in the subtle ways that signal belonging. And before you ask, yes, competence can be performative. In fact its a critical part of the learning-journey to become a health professional!

Everywhere my friend turned there seemed to be unwritten rules, implied and unspoken expectations about behaviour, confidence, tone and judgement that nobody had bothered to make explicit.

There was no handbook explaining how to navigate the institution or the field of medical education. And yet the rules were there. They shaped everything. And if you don’t fully appreciate the rules of the game, you will fall behind, and have to work twice as hard just to understand how to survive. As for my friend, she ended up droppign out of medical school.

However, not long after she returned to study. She left the rigid medical programme and enrolled in biomedical sciences. The culture was different. The social signalling was different. The student body was different. There were still expectations, of course, but they were less steeped in inherited tradition and less bound up with social background. She thrived. She completed a Masters, then a PhD, and went on to build a successful academic career.

Years later, when she would reflect on her time in medicine, she would say she simply wasn't built for it. I always thought the opposite. It wasn't that she wasn't built for medical school. It was that the system was not built for people like her.

That was a few decades ago. I would like to believe things have changed. But when you consider how competitive entry into elite medical schools in the UK is, and who tends to navigate those environments most smoothly, it is hard to deny that those already plugged into the hidden curriculum of such institutions find it easier to thrive. And that right there, the hidden curriculum, is what this post is about.

This is not just a story about medical school. Or about elite universities. Or about centuries-old institutions heavy with tradition. The hidden curriculum, the rules of the game, run through all universities.

The rules may be less theatrical than in an elite medical school, but they are still there. How to write an essay that earns a first. How to contribute in seminars without either dominating or disappearing. How to interpret feedback without collapsing into self-doubt. How to email a lecturer in a way that signals seriousness rather than insecurity. How to navigate a system that expects judgement, initiative and intellectual confidence without ever fully explaining what those words mean in practice.

If nobody names these rules, most students do what my friend did, they assume the problem is them. It isn't.

When you don't know that a hidden curriculum exists, you can work incredibly hard and still feel vaguely off-balance, as if everyone else understands something you don't. You prepare for essays by trying to demonstrate everything you know, when what you are actually being assessed on is your ability to construct and defend an argument. You enter seminars thinking the goal is to produce the correct answer, when what is being evaluated is your capacity to think aloud, test ideas, and tolerate being partially wrong. You read journal articles believing you need to memorise their findings, when what matters is whether you can assess their strengths, limitations and implications.

There is a deeper logic underneath everything you are asked to do at university. And much of that logic is so embedded in institutional habit that even lecturers sometimes struggle to articulate why certain tasks are designed the way they are. The system runs partly on tradition and assumption. But it is a system nonetheless. It is structured. And that structure shapes your experience and your marks.

Your first job as a student, assuming you do not want to feel like you’re constantly getting screwed with your pants on, is to understand the hidden curriculum. Observe it in action.

The hidden curriculum is not about innate brilliance. It is not about being "naturally academic." It is not reserved for those from particular schools or backgrounds. At its core, it is pattern recognition. Once you begin to see the patterns, what is rewarded, what is penalised, what counts as evidence of judgement, you cannot unsee them. And that nagging feeling that everyone else "gets it" except you will start to fade.