I'm a 2nd year at UCD. I would say that the curriculum is in flux. Supposedly, they are currently redoing a lot of the curriculum and will start the "new" curriculum when the medical school moves to Sacramento. What the "new" curriculum entails, I am not entirely sure, but I think the point is more make it more clinically relevant and possibly more of a systems approach. They claim that will happen beginning next fall. The building is nowhere near done at this point, so we'll see.
As for right now, they seem to make small changes in the curriculum every year. My class was the first class to have the "new" Doctoring class which rolled several previous classes into one and added some new things, like making home visits to chronically ill patients in their homes. We also had a "new" biochemistry class, which seemed the same as the old one first quarter, but really was a lot different and better the second quarter. I am not sure what the current 1st years are getting that is "new," but I wouldn't be surprised if they have changed some things slightly.
The bottom line is that right now UCD has a pretty traditionaly curriculum with some PBL. Davis does put a strong emphasis on clinical training and from what I can tell we do a lot more the "psychosocial" stuff in our Doctoring class than other schools do. If you come here to interview, I would ask a lot of questions to get the curriculum clarified because I think most students I know could not tell you much about what the new changes mean. Hope that helps.
