I am a current intern in a Boston area TY program. On average (there are always outliers), TY programs TEND to be more competitive to get into. What does that mean? Board scores higher, a lot of "name" med schools, research publications, yada yada yada. But I, for one, didn't have great scores and I come from a good school, but not an Ivy or Ivy-like school. The only thing I can say is letters of rec and grades are the overall best thing for any applicant (unless you are going into Ortho or Derm 🙂 I had very good 3rd year grades and outstanding 4th year grades and (from what I was told) strong LORs.
In terms of workload--variable. Some TYs have surgery, some don't. Some have 9 m onths of call, and some have 6. You just need to do the research on each program.
Hope this helps!