Whatever the school wide goal is, you need to look specifically at the residency program for a given field. I'm sure some departments do more research than others, but regardless of the goals, if you want to be an academic physician with your feet significantly in certain types of research, regardless of how a program is changing, you're not going to be prepared in the same way as you would be by a program that already has a strong research environment established. You don't grow a research core overnight just because you want to.
ERAS is the application system. You apply everywhere you want to and then the programs offer you interviews. After that you rank them on a different website.
The experience of clinical rotations in general and the many interactions you have and opportunities to ask questions of all residents as an MS3 or 4 as well as the experience you have with hospital logistics will help you decide what you are looking for an alert you to more questions/concerns you need to have about your future residency. And regardless of audition rotations, you'll have done at least 2 rotations in the field of interest (even if at your home institution), so you learn pros/cons of the field from that -- how would the experience be different at a place that doesn't have interns on the team? if it's a field with a prelim year, what system do they have in place at the beginning of PGY2 to help you transition or do they just throw you to the wolves when you haven't touched the field since you were an MS4? What other programs/departments at the hospital do you need to ask about to make sure they have a good relationship with your residency? Do you want more or less outpatient in your training? Why? What type of certifications/limitations does the hospital have for certain procedures if any in your field and what does that mean to your training? How are patients distributed between teaching and non-teaching teams if there are both? What percentage of patients are restricted to attendings and who are those patients (i.e. are all the patients with disease X being seen by the hot-shot specialist b/c they're paying out of pocket and thus you won't actually learn to manage disease X paradoxically b/c that hospital has a highly regarded specialist for it)?
When you go to interview for a residency, it is typically over 2 days with a dinner/social gathering with residents the night before to get to ask questions away from faculty followed by an entire day of discussing the program with you, having interviews with numerous faculty, and meeting other applicants who are actually in my experience a great resource for learning about differences in programs. Even if everybody were totally up front with you, you as a pre-med won't have the context to understand the implications of what they're saying with regards to many pros/cons. A lot of it comes down to gut instinct, but if you're only interviewing with one program you'll have no basis for comparison. The first few interviews I did were poor fits, but I didn't realize that until I had basis for comparison and experienced a better fit. Likewise, I've learned a lot of questions/concerns from other applicants on the interview trail -- you won't have that.
That said, it's NYU & I doubt any of the programs are bottom of the barrel in terms of training. You do have to be wary even with good programs that they might be malignant.
Also, at each step further along this path, you have more and more clout in the admissions decision. By the time you're applying for residency, if you're a strong applicant for your field, the interview has a significant component of you interviewing the program to rank them as opposed to you as the applicant being the only one scrutinized. I say this b/c I don't want you to feel like you have to do this b/c residency application is as much of a crap shoot as med school admissions, and you shouldn't feel like this opportunity to secure yourself a spot is an offer you can't refuse.
