Pitt Med really isn't that competitive. You're going to have competition at any school where people are used to getting high grades. People here do NOT sabotage anyone and in fact, a lot of the students will email the rest of the class study guides or links to good websites.
As for the cheating scandal, we had a meeting about it recently. We don't know a lot of details, but from what we were told, it was only a FEW students. And those people are idiots. The majority of the students were genuinely shocked and pissed off that people would do that. I think Pitt is full of people who really believe in the honor system and what it means to be professional.
Anyway, the cheating has been taken care of since all of the exams are now being rewritten--so any old exams that were being passed around are worthless. And our faculty have been great about it. They could be punishing everyone right now, but they really believe in trusting us. And rather than making decisions about what to do by themselves, the faculty and our honor council brought the issue to the students to generate a discussion.
It sucks some of you have heard bad things about Pitt. I think our students are awesome and really willing to help each other (and the community) out. The cheating thing is a freak incident and I can guarantee you that the majority of the students here wouldn't even think about cheating.