This post's a little long, but I've broken it down so you can look at the parts that are of interest to you:
Class closeness. It's mostly by year. At the beginning of each school year, you'll most likely hang out with the people you go to basic with (because you've spent a month with them. BTW this is not like "basic-basic" i.e young kid joining the military, so nothing like the movies where there's a lot of yelling. You'll still learn the military stuff, but there's a medical focus at least for the army. Oh and you get to do cool things like run field hospitals, do medivacs, shoot, and land-nav).
Something unexpected. I didn't realize that I was only going to be here for 1.5 years. With the revamped curriculum, we cover the preclerkship material in 18 months. My class is heading for our rotations all around the country (another great opportunity) in January. This gives us more clinical experience. Admittedly, I had my reservations about this- specifically with regards to Step 1- but the first class that did this curriculum crushed their step 1 so it's looking good so far. Hopefully it's more than just that class haha.
Negatives. Very few if any. You'll have to fill out paper work if you want to leave a certain radius (I think it's like 300 miles? Top border is New York City if that helps- i.e you can visit NYC without a pass). It's not really a problem as you can get the paper work filled out pretty easily and if you do it a week in advance you should be good. Also something that a few might consider a negative is some of the additional military stuff we have to do (i.e disaster response planning, mil history, etc.). Personally, I love those things as they're a welcome break from constant medicine, plus it makes one a more well rounded physician. Admittedly it can seem like a drag if it's on the week leading up to an exam, but you'll manage.
While we're on the topic of extra training, I just want to share how great this extra training is. We see see a lot of ultrasound (relatively speaking), we have tons of patient/sim patient interactions, we're now certified in ACLS (something most other students do in their internship year; we do it twice before internship!), we learn a lot of emergency-med/trauma skills even in our first year (like intubating, starting IVs, chest tubes, needle decompressions, etc), and we get to partake in field exercises where we get to do things like learn combatives and how to maneuver obstacle courses. The training is really unparalleled and if you're passionate about something you'll find that you can get training in that (i.e me and a whole bunch of students are already doing FLS- fundamentals of laproscopy- training at Walter Reed. This is something most people do in their surgical residency!). This is one of my absolute favorite things about this school and can go on and on, but hopefully you get the gist. I didn't even get to summer experiences!
Finally Admin/Prof Drama. Not a lot of that here, if there even is any. The professors are all very friendly and extremely willing to help. Most go above and beyond, but obviously you have to reach out to them (although module directors will reach out to you if they see your struggling).
