To be fair, the 3 wks leading up to dedicated study is a lighter schedule than the rest of second year and ends with a 1 wk "review". Its still a pain. They make us do practice tests periodically through spring semester of second year, and basically tell us we should be studying the whole time. The week before dedicated study is filled with pre-clinical shelfs, a COMSAE, a 4 hr in-house "practice test", and some random courses like ACLS.
Yeah, some people opt to lose their 3rd year vacation to add 4 wks (requires a reorganization of their 3rd year schedule for some people), but its a messed up deal because outside of that vacation we officially get a total of like 4-5 days off in 3rd year (Thanksgiving and the Friday after, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I think New Year's Eve?) . They force the bottom quartile to take the extra time also.
Schedule sucks. Their goal is for us to pass and do OK on boards. Its pretty clear the admin aren't looking for us to do our very best, just adequate. In 4th year we get a 4 wk block that we can use for Level/Step 2 studying or a 4 wk rotation. They don't let us split it up at all, so we either take Level 2 during the last week of that block and use the block as a study period, or we use the whole block as an elective. We can't study and then do like a 2 wk elective (on a separate note we can't do a 2 wk rotation anywhere officially unless we use our vacation for it, its 4 wks or nothing).
Again, lots of rules. My school is fine and good on other stuff, but they have a lot of annoying and at times overbearing rules because they think that's the only way to do things.