this was forwarded from a friend of mine who did the program last year...hope it helps
The program is 90% identicle to the first year of medical school at tufts. that means you take the same classes they take (at the same time of the year they take it for the most part) but the mbs class is treated as a second section of the same course. that means that if the medical students have the biochem lecture in the morning at 9am, you might have it at 10:30 or 1:30pm the same day. so typically their classes are in the morning and yours are in the afternoon for the most part. so that means that you have the same professors (who are really good, and experts in the field) as the medical students, and the same exams, just given in different rooms. while the medical students get a pass/fail/honors grade, you will get an actual grade for the same course. your grade would be determined by using the grades of the medical students, so your curve is based off of their performance, and usually it is equivalent, which is a great way to show medical schools that you are competent.
there are 3 blocks in a semester and classes are either 1 or 2 blocks of a semester. so last semester, this the classes that i had:
block 1 (5 weeks roughly)
molecular biology
biochemistry
block 2
biochemistry continues
immunology
cell, tissue, organ biology (the cell bio part here)
clinical medicine (very similar to CH 107, science and practice of medicine, same professor)
thanksgiving
block 3
cell, tissue, organ biology (now the histology component)
clinical medicine
so as you can see, it started with 2 classes, was 4 classes in october and november, then after thanksgiving was back to 2 classes. from mid october on, you had an exam once or twice a week every week until dec 19th, but at any once time, its not as intense as a finals period where you could have 3 finals in 2 days kinda thing.... all in all, i did a lot better in this program than in undergrad classes, for some reason, perhaps because i study with my roomate who is in the med school, so there is hope.
the 2nd semester is a little more intense. you only have 2 weeks "grace period" with 2 classes and then it becomes 4-5 classes pretty quickly. everyone takes physiology, anatomy, pathology, and nutrition. then you must choose one elective as well. most people do epidemiology if they are considering doing an mph the following year. i am doing law in public health, an mph course which is very different and informative.