Thank you so much for your in-depth response. It gives great insight on what to expect and how to approach the program. If you wouldn't mind can you please go into some detail about the curriculum...how difficult or similar the biochemistry course first semester is compared to an undergraduate biochem or cell bio course and would you recommend doing some slight review of anything in particular to better prepare for first day of classes. Thanks again!
Another ridiculously long post lol:
One of the most important things you will learn in this year is HOW to study. This year will be good preparation for your study skills in medical school. This is coming from people I know who did MSP and took med school classes in MBS this year. They said there will still be a learning curve for med school classes, but you will be so much more prepared by being in MSP.
Fall semester classes: 2 undergraduate courses (General Chemistry and Physics 1) and 3 graduate level courses (Biochemistry & Cell Bio, Pharmacology, and Community Dimensions of Medicine). You will also take a Lab course unless you've already done research before so you would be exempt. So you take 2 undergrad review classes (supposed to help with the mcat) and the 2 graduate level science courses (the community dimensions class is an easy "A" course as long as you participate in discussions).
Spring semester classes: 2 undergrad (Organic Chemistry and Physics 2) and 2 graduate level courses (anatomy and physiology). Anatomy is one of the most time intensive courses you will probably ever take. Physiology is pretty time intensive too.
On top of all of this, you have Princeton Review mcat class 3 days per week from 6-8:30pm for both semesters. This class runs from mid-september to early april. Overall, if you are on top of your studying throughout this year, you will feel like there are never enough hours in the day to accomplish what you need to.
Class Breakdown:
MCAT class: like I said, 3 times per week 6-8:30pm. Princeton Review. Class is required (you can miss at most 2 per mcat section per semester (2 biological sciences absences, 2 physical sciences absences, and 2 verbal sciences absences). Like I said above, putting in the work outside of mcat class is what will get you a good score and start going hard in september. Do not wait until the spring semester.
Lab Course: Like I said above, if you've done research before, you will be exempt from this class. I know you may think, "Even though I've done research this could be an easy A to boost my graduate gpa." Firstly, in hearing from my friends' experiences who took the class, it is not an easy A. Secondly, I feel as if they were forever working on lab reports. You have more than enough studying with your other classes and mcat so if you can avoid this class, I would recommend it.
GChem/Orgo: GChem is fine. It will be easy because of the professor. You may feel as if it is a little watered down from your undergrad GChem course and it is, but I felt this was a good thing. You cover the topics in a manner that is beneficial for the mcat. For example, he won't have you doing hundreds of the most difficult stoichiometry problems because will you be doing that on the mcat? Nope. Orgo...all I can say is good luck. lol. Same professor and he's not the best teacher at it to be honest. This is the one course in MSP I felt was lacking, but luckily I was very strong at Orgo in college so I did not have a problem. My friends who hated Orgo in college actually did pretty well because I taught a lot of it to them and our TA for Orgo was amazing. Whoever your TA for Orgo is (someone from my MSP class), I'm sure they will be great in helping you.
Physics: I'll make this brief. If you like (and are good at) Physics, Dr. Carchidi will take you to the next level in your understanding of Physics...so I've heard. lol. For people like me who hate Physics more than pretty much anything, you will need to work your butt off. I had to make the trek to UPenn to his office quite a few times to even begin to understand this man's method of teaching.
For the graduate science courses, I will tell you up front...I was an Humanities major in college, took only one upper level science course (Cell & Molec Bio), took time off after college, and jumped right into these classes. So basically, if I can do well with my background, you should be able to as well. I obviously cannot compare them to prior experiences with these courses since I never took them.
Biochem: If you study your butt off and know everything, you should do fine. Focus on the study guides she provides, but know as much as you can going into a given exam.
Pharmacology: This is a grueling course. There are only 3 tests and that's it for your grade, so you need to go hard with this class. First test: not bad, about 50 drugs (mechanism of action, adverse effects, etc) and a lot of content. Second test: this test was a beast...about 130 drugs and a lot of content as well. My mistake with this test was thinking because there were so many more drugs than on the first test, I needed to focus mostly on them and not as much on the content. This was not the case. Know the drugs, but know the content even better. Third test: about 100 drugs and a lot of content.
Community Dimensions: an easy 2 credit "A" is much welcomed with your other tough graduate courses. In order to get this A, do the few bs assignments, participate in class regularly, and do your community service. In this class, you will have interesting discussions with your classmates about healthcare in regards to race, socioeconomic status, etc. You are required to have a 40 hour community service commitment this semester for this course as well. 40 hours does not sound like a lot, but considering how busy you will be it is not easy. I recommend finding 2 places to do community service if one of your places does not allow for a lot of hours.
Physio: If you study your butt off, you will see Dr. Hurley as an amazing professor who truly cares about her students. If you don't, you will probably hate her. lol. She is a great professor who will really make you know your stuff. Record the lectures, relisten to them and make sure you write down practically everything she says. And don't be that person who doesn't look intensively at charts and graphs in lecture slides. Know them well. Her tests are very applicative. So do not just memorize facts, understand the concepts and overarching idea of everything. This is how well you will need to know her stuff; she will give you a particular question and these will be these multiple choice answer possibilities:
a. trypsin
b. CCK
c. secretin
d. pepsin
e. 2 of these
f. 3 of these
g. all of the above
h. none of the above
The letter answers "e" and "f" are the tricky aspect to her tests because at least for me, I am used to that saying "a and b" or "c and d" or whatever. Basically the way she does it does not narrow down the answer for you at all, so you have to know your stuff. A lot of her questions are like this. Like I said though, she will prepare you for this and if you work your butt off, you will handle these questions well.
Anatomy: The killer. Dr. Minugh Purvis (head of IHS program) teaches this class and like physio, if you work harder than you ever have before, you will love her. If not, you will absolutely hate her. This woman knows her stuff. She taught gross anatomy at UPenn's dental and med school, so be prepared. She throws a med school amount of material at you (approximately). I say that because my girlfriend (who is a med student) saw what I was doing and agreed that it was pretty much on that level. You must listen to recordings and know EVERY SINGLE THING. EVERYTHING. The textbook for this class is useless unless for a reference. Get your content knowledge from her lectures and get your anatomical structure knowledge from your atlas. The atlas is your best friend in this class, not the textbook. This class is difficult for so many reasons. Firstly, there are no pictures on the exams. You need to look at your atlas enough to know where things are in your head. This requires studying every single view of a particular structure in your atlas. On top of that, she's not just gonna ask you simply what that structure is, she wants you to incorporate all your information together so you must know where something is in relation to where everything else is. For example, she's not gonna be like: where is the internal carotid artery? She will want to know: when the internal carotid enters the skull thru the petrous portion of the temporal bone and runs by the cavernous sinus, what nerve is immediately lateral to it? So be prepared for stuff like that. Also, you need to know your stuff in and out because, for example, on the head and neck exam, she will have a question like this:
In the neck:
a. the internal carotid runs through it medial to the external carotid
b. muscle "a" is medial to muscle "b"
c. muscle c elevates the hyoid bone
d. the thyroid cartilage is a derivative of the 2nd pharyngeal arch
This is difficult because her questions are so broad. "In the neck:" means for this particular question, you will need to know every single thing about the entire neck to answer it. On top of that, sometimes she will give you "a-c" which she lectured on but you will look at "d" and wonder if she ever mentioned anything about it in lecture. In your head, you know "a-c" is wrong, but you have no idea about "d." The thing is, even if she never talked about something or it wasn't something you should know from staring at your atlas for hours, the fact that she taught about "a-c" and didn't teach "d" means you should be able to eliminate "a-c" and choose "d" as the correct answer. Don't be psyched out by all of this because if you know everything, you will be fine. All of her questions are prompts like the one above..."in regards to the internal carotid:" "in the head:" "regarding cranial nerve VIII:"
Like I said, you will probably need to get in a habit of recording lectures and relistening to them. I, and pretty much every other MSP student, relistened to every lecture for the graduate science courses (except biochem and some pharm lectures depending on who was lecturing that day) and took extensive notes based on this. This is especially crucial for anatomy and physiology because practically every single word that comes out of their mouths will be important and fair-game on the exam. Recording lectures for the undergrad classes and the graduate community dimensions of medicine class are NOT necessary. That would be a waste of time as you will find out. Btw, you will probably think a little of this info seems weird once you hear that the physio professor doesnt allow to students to record her lectures and the anatomy professor does not allow students to print her slides. However, the physio teacher's exams are so ridiculously detailed and based off of every little thing she says so you would be dumb not to record her lectures just because she asks you not to. One of my friends wanted to respect her wishes, so he stopped recording; however, he still got all the recordings from me because he knew he needed them to do well. lol. As for the lecture slides in anatomy, she has some lock on the slides so you cannot print them, but our class quickly found PDF Pirate which unlocks that restriction so we could print the slides. I would say that printing anatomy slides isnt necessary if you record lectures and just follow the lecture slides as you review your notes, but recording physio lectures is 100% necessary.
Hope this helps. And like I said, do not let this overwhelm you. Not trying to boast, as someone with my science background, I felt these classes were very tough because of all of the intense studying I had to do, but I felt as if the exams were fairly easy. This was only because I worked my butt off though, so if you do the same you will be fine.
And to answer your second question, if anything I would do some light mcat studying this summer. I would not recommend pre-studying for the classes because you will be fine starting in august. Do not go too hard with the mcat studying though...you do not want to burn yourself out as soon as you start classes because you were studying too hard over the summer. You will need a lot of endurance this school year, so pace yourself this summer.
still waiting on other programs though, but I'm SO excited that I DEF have something for the fall as good as a program as this one!! I can't believe it!! good luck to everyone else!!!! 
