An anonymous letter published on Saturday, 12 September 2026, has accused students, professors and technical staff of colluding to leak confidential exam questions and marking grids during France's national exam for entry into medical specialty training, French daily 20 Minutes reported. The letter, signed only by a student identified as "E", says the fraud was organized through a Telegram group during the Examens Cliniques Objectifs Structurés, the oral component of the exam that decides which specialty and hospital newly qualified doctors go on to join.
Between 10,000 and 10,500 new resident doctors are due to start in French hospitals in November, based on the results of this exam.
The final mark for the exam is split into three parts: 60% for written tests known as the EDN, sat in October, 10% for points accumulated during training, and 30% for the Ecos. The oral exams involve ten simulated clinical scenarios judged by juries, using trained actors known as "standardized patients," and were introduced to guarantee that the process was fair.
What the anonymous letter alleges
The letter describes what it calls an "ephemeral" Telegram group bringing together students, teachers and technical staff, through which exam subjects and the official evaluation grids, both meant to be strictly confidential, were allegedly shared free of charge. According to the letter, seen by 20 Minutes along with supporting documents, this amounted to organized cheating involving several medical schools, examiners, students and organizers together.
The author wrote that this year's Ecos had been a fiasco, even a national scandal passed over in silence, pointing to cheating, favoritism and discriminatory treatment, and said French medicine could be ashamed of what it had become.
The student said his own ranking had been exceptional enough to secure him the specialty and city of his choice, so he was not motivated by spite or jealousy. He said he decided to come forward because friends who had not had the same luck had spoken to him about suicide.
Students voice anger online
Reaction among students has been explosive on social media and in hospital corridors. Rankings normally shift by no more than 1,000 to 2,000 places between the written and oral stages, but this year saw unprecedented jumps of 4,000, 5,000 and even 6,000 places, according to the report.
Celia, a medical student, said some candidates who had ranked in the top 500 after the written exams fell to around 6,000 after the orals, calling it a plot twist worthy of Netflix. She said some medical schools had scored 20 out of 20 on extremely difficult oncogenetics questions, adding that it was not possible to avoid a single stumble and still score full marks without knowing the grading grid in advance.
A doctor and content creator known as Medecinmuscle said people take their own lives because the exam is so hard, while others are handed questions they do not deserve simply because they belong to the right circle. He told the teachers accused of leaking the papers that they had blood on their hands.
Marine, a sixth-year student in Lyon, said the situation was completely unfair and disgusting and that she felt genuinely revolted. She said that since Saturday there had been a witch hunt, with her and her friends trying to work out who had been part of the Telegram group, and said students sacrifice their whole lives for these exams while privileged classmates cheat without any consequence.
An anonymous doctor who trained in the 1980s said the resentment was nothing new, recalling that in his own time there were rumors of private coaching sessions reserved for the children of senior physicians.
Organizers deny fraud, union wants inquiry
The Centre National de Gestion, the body that organizes the exam, categorically denied on Monday any suspicion of fraud, citing statistical analysis that it said made the accusations less likely. The denial has not calmed the controversy.
Thibault Patey, president of the Association Nationale des Etudiants en Medecine de France, the national medical students' union, said that given the material published, the union was taking the allegations seriously. He acknowledged there was currently no way to prove the letter's claims, and called for further investigation.
The National Order of Physicians told 20 Minutes it has no investigative powers of its own and said it defers to the health and higher education ministries. It added that if cheating were confirmed following an investigation, and university hospital professors were found to be involved, sanctions could follow.
