As a former Biomedical Professions program graduate, I can give you the stats of my class of 2018-2019;
Out of ~75 students and ~15 Spring newcomers / students from previous year, only 41% were interviewed and half of them were accepted.
Those who weren't accepted and were put on the waitlist haven't heard any updates with their statuses. I know some fellow classmates who met the MCAT and grad GPA threshold who deserve a seat at DCOM have still yet to be heard. It feels like the MS students are treated as if they are second class applicants because during interview and waitlist phases, almost all traditional applicants were accepted while MS students were immediately waitlisted.
With the new Biomedical Sciences program, I feel that they created this program to make more money off of students. Look at how the initial 30 units to graduate has been increased to 37! That's way more than other 1 year SMP including some of top, big name MD programs. Also it is mandatory to take Histology, Virology, Pharmacology, Immunology, and Vertebrae Physiology. Previously, only select few were allowed to take Histology (students who chose to stay another semester/year after obtaining their MS or students who asked the question when the administration was making the schedule) and Immunology was an elective. The new Virology, Pharmacology, and Vertebrae Physiology courses has never been taught before so I do not know how its going to be but I am assuming its going to be 1. hot mess because of how inception of new class are 2. difficult because of being 1. and classes like Pharmacology will be a new experience for many of the newcomers 3. Physiology that was taught this past spring and the last was an absolute mess with professors not knowing how to lecture and making the exam extremely difficult / not relating to lectured material; over half of the class was failing.
With that being said, the guaranteed interview threshold GPA of 3.4 might sound not too bad BUT with the new courses and heavy load, its gonna be quite difficult. Getting a 3.5 my year with only 30 credits was quite a feat so put that on perspective. Oh also with the new Knoxville campus opening, MGA AND Histology lecture will be streamed for both campuses and around 500 students will be enrolled in it. I think thats unfair because there's only like less than 10 MGA / Histo faculty which lacks interaction capacity with students and paying same amount of money for the recorded lectures. Although I did hear DCOM did hire some new faculty so there maybe more PhDs in the team but the school is known notoriously for poor faculty retention. Albeit Knoxville obviously offered quite an amenity compared to a rural village of Harrogate. Side note, since Histo similar to MGA and Neuroanatomy are DCOM classes, you'll be paying alittle more $$$ compared to traditional grad level courses. So LMU will be generating $$$ as they force new MS students to take Histology and extra 7 units previous masters students did not have to take...
About the Bootcamp, I think you have to pay $1000 for 3 weeks of intense anatomy classes taught by one of the faculty and few med student / grad student TAs. I can say that it is a nice introduction for how testing works at LMU in regards to both written and laboratory practicials but a
published study done by LMU says it only helped achieve 3% higher score compared to those students who didn't take the bootcamp for the first MGA exam and the rest of the following exams showed no added benefit. In my opinion, I feel like that $1000 can be used for something else.
Obviously I am really biased and honest but my opinion in fact is shared by many of the MS program graduates.
I might get attacked by LMU loyalists, few that were accepted to DCOM because of super high stats AND/OR CONNECTIONS but oh well.
So, If I were interested in attending this school or the program, I kindly suggest to look elsewhere because I can guarantee you, you'll have a good time at a more known university located in a better location with tremendous amount of opportunities. I'm not doing this just for my own sake but I really don't want future students to go through what me and many of the students had to go through shelling out $$$ for the program that proved to have more cons than pro.