A lot of schools are moving in this direction. From what I understand, Duke is the only one that has abbreviated the basic science curriculum to 1 year. However, a bunch of schools do it in 1.5 years. Baylor, Hopkins, and Penn are the first ones that come to mind.
I go to Penn, and I love the shortened preclinical curriculum. I think part of it is because of the way our curriculum is structured. So for the first four months (August-December), we do basic stuff like histology, biochem, anatomy, cellular physio, micro, embryo, epidemiology, genetics, and immunology. They basically do 3 classes at a time, and it's done so that we take a more dense class with 2 less dense classes (so one block, we had limb anatomy with epidemiology and immunology). This way, we're really only focusing on one class, with two other classes that don't require as much effort. It makes life less stressful while consolidating a lot of classes.
Starting in January of first year, we start organ blocks, and do those from January till December, with two months of break for the summer. The pace picks up a lot, but honestly, it's not that bad. I still definitely have a ton of fun and med school is a blast!
In January of 2nd year, we start our required clinical rotations. MD candidates do this for a whole year, and then take step 1 in January of 3rd year. After that, they have a year and a half left to do electives and the required "scholarly pursuit" which can basically be anything.
For me, it's also nice because I'm an MD/PhD student, so I'll get to do 6 months of clinical rotations before I take step 1 and then start my PhD. Otherwise, I would have to wait about 6 years from when I started med school to work in the clinics.
So yeah, I'm a huge advocate of the shortened curriculum.
