I am current first year and will do my best to answer some questions that I've seen...
I applied as a non-traditional candidate with a solid MCAT (>30), decent GPA (3.6ish), a post-bacc program, and numerous other EC items. I was a late applicant and interviewed pretty late, but had no problem getting in.
As for the courses now, I will just reinforce a few things that some of my classmates have previously posted:
1. The curriculum is in transition. UNECOM is attempting to transform from a traditional lecture-based teaching to a more "integrative" approach. What this means is that we don't spend much time in lectures, and the time that we do spend in lecture is often spent working with our small group on open-ended questions. We are required to do a significant amount of work over the weekend and before the lectures in order to be able to understand what is being presented. For example: right now we are doing cardiac. Rather than focus just on cardiac physiology, we are looking at the phys while also having path/biochem/histo etc. tied in. Our lectures during the week don't start with the basic stuff, but instead we jump directly into harder things. An example of this was our first lecture on EKGs IMMEDIATELY jumped into identifying pathologic EKGs without going over the basics of a normal EKG, how they're recorded, etc. All this "basic" stuff was expected to be learned by ourselves over the weekend.
So with only about 6-8 hours in "lecture" each week, the rest of our time is spent in small groups where we work in groups of 6 to reinforce the material. Many people (me included) feel that this time is a waste, but I know some really benefit from learning from their peers.
2. With the change in curriculum, there was supposedly a mass exodus of professors last year. Also, the professors who did stay have had to adjust to the change in style just like the students have. As a result, I feel many of our professors (especially on the "OMK" side, which is composed of our basic science classes) do a poor job presenting the material. Although our anatomy/OMT professors in our "OCS" side have been great, a lot of the info we learn in OMK comes from outside resources (ie reading at home on weekends).
3. I would say that the increase in class size has seemed fairly seamless. The lecture hall my class of 175 (actually we probably have lost ~10 kids so far...so maybe 165 at this point) uses is well suited for the style of learning they are trying to create. The big question is what will happen next year when two large classes have to share the same space... The biggest question mark is parking -- it is already horrible and having an extra 50 students next year will make it absolutely miserable
4. Except for the 6 hours of OMK lecture each week, attendance to everything else is "mandatory". We just started to video capture the lectures which is a huge help (except for the professors that are just awful at teaching). Everyday is essentially 8-5:30 with an hour and a half for lunch. We also get one morning and one afternoon off each week (unless we are doing standardized patients, preceptorships, or other random things).
I feel that for the people who have an extremely strong background in the information (either through a post-bac program or previous work as a nurse/PA/etc) the workload is bearable and the integrative curriculum actually works well. For those without a strong background, their nights and weekends are absolutely loaded with trying to learn the "basics" so they don't fall behind.
