I'm a current MS1 and the following is just my own knowledge/opinion based on what I've heard from both my classmates as well as upperclassmen so please take this information with a grain of salt.
I believe the old curriculum consisted of 16 blocks, with first year focusing primarily on normal human biology and 2nd year focusing more on pathology. The new curriculum consists of 8 units that are systems based, so both the normal function and pathology of each organ system should be covered side by side within each unit. The new curriculum is also pass/fail, with one exception. If you score 90+ on each of the 8 end of unit exams (each one is actually a series of exams over the course of one week), you get a "pass with distinction" which I believe they use for AOA (they will probably deny this but a number of upperclassmen I've talked to say that this will most likely be the case). The old curriculum used the traditional honors/high pass/pass/etc. system. We also learn clinical skills starting in the first week of MS1 as opposed to the beginning of MS2. In addition, starting in Unit 2 in the beginning of October each of us will be spending 3 hours every other week at a healthcare facility, which will most likely consist of us shadowing a physician and perhaps doing basic physical exams and taking histories (I'm just speculating about what we will actually do, they haven't really told us anything about this yet).
The earlier complaint by one of my classmates was primarily focused on the perceived lack of direction from the faculty in terms of what we are supposed to learn. I think this is true to some extent, but they have been improving this aspect of the curriculum, and I'm sure that some people at other medical schools may feel the same way about their curriculum. Ultimately, you just have to figure out the best way to study that will allow you to pass comfortably (unless you're gunning for AOA), which I don't think is that difficult for most people. Very few students failed out of the previous curriculum and from what I've gathered, most upperclassmen believe that the new curriculum is less stressful overall compared to their old curriculum.
One personal issue I have is with the PBL sessions. They take up a significant amount of time every week (~4-5 hours) and this is just my opinion but the amount of material that we learn doesn't really justify the amount of time spent in PBL. This might be dependent on the individual facilitators that each small group has so some people may understandably disagree with me when it comes to this subject. However based on my own experiences with PBL, I personally think that it would be a more efficient use of my time to just study the material on my own.
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