Grades don't particularly matter once you get into med school as long as you are passing; however, a 7 is an 85%, 6 is 75%, 5 is 65%, and a 4 is whatever their hofstee pass mark is based on stats, usually somewhere in the 50-60% range. <4 sort of depends, with a 3 usually allowing for someone to sit for a supplemental with the understanding that regardless of your supplemental grade, the highest you can get is a 4 still. 2 and 1 typically are straight fails. With that said, you need to average a 4.5 or higher for student loans. Some courses are P/F, some are graded, and they aren't all equal in terms of credit hours. 7's are incredibly hard to get, and that is mostly due to the way that the tests are written, largely due to many of their 'difficult' questions not related to actual conceptual application of learned ideas but dumb factoids that are arguably not relevant to anything. Part of your first 2 years, there is a required research component/class, and typically during that time they will go over how to get on elective research projects and where to find current projects/contact info. It's not hard to get involved, but is it necessary - well that's up to you. Most Americans wait until they are back at Ochsner before they start research. There is a portal there to find current projects, and there are lists shared amongst residents who need student help.
Away rotations have been discussed before, but the program is changing and there is now a required elective rotation that is built into the program. You can still do an optional elective between MS3 and MS4 and after MS4 (insurance covers us until the end of the calendar year). How the built-in elective works out is anybodies guess. It hasn't happened yet, but it's supposed to offer the opportunity to do things that Ochsner doesn't offer as part of their normal rotation schedule, like interventional rads or derm etc or I suppose being able to do an additional away rotation in something you want to match into, ED is the big one that requires aways due to their strange application requirements. One of the current MS4s did an away in interventional rads for his optional so it is available.
Y'all really need to look at previous UQO threads. So many of these questions have been answered multiple times. The shift in clinical years is new though, so nobody is going to be able to answer that until next year.