I wanted to start off by saying I do think this program prepares you well for what courses will look like in medical school. The curriculum matches some of what is taught to the first and second year medical students (same professors and even some of the same slides). Previous students that have done this program often out perform regular applicants in their pre-clinical years. Even students that have gone to other medical schools do extremely well.
However, if you are out of state I recommend NOT doing this program. With the new bill that passed, you would be using a lot of that cap towards this program and there were no out of state students taken out of this year's ~28% of the class. The total cost for out of state was around $109,000 (fall, spring, and summer) if you take out enough to pay rent, eat, retake the MCAT, application fees, and any additional costs.
The stats shown during orientation showed that for the last couple years ~70% of a class was taken. That number is from the amount that complete the program, or graduate. As far as we know, with orientation starting today, there are still only 7 students accepted out of the whole class. A few students on the waitlist accepted spots at other schools, leaving around 14 or so students still on the waitlist.
This program previously was given high priority on the waitlist. Students that got 515+ on their MCAT were passed over. Students that got almost a 4.0 GPA were passed over. Lower MCATs were taken.
Toledo is terrible with communication for everything. Be prepared to find out everything last minute and never really feel like you have support. The MSBS coordinators have nothing to do with medical school admission, so as far as that aspect they really don't know anything. The medical school keeps them in the dark.
There was no communication to the class about a change of the evaluation criteria. Toledo doesn’t even consider Graduate/Post-bacc GPA if an applicant has a lower undergraduate GPA (none of us recall seeing this before, likely new). This program is supposed to be an academic enhancer.
If you decide to choose this program, start studying for the MCAT now if you have to retake it. They will recommend you take it around January, but with the intensity of classes it is very difficult to do both at the same time. I don’t even have a target recommendation for you because they took below 500, but didn’t take a 518.
Overall, very high risk and very low reward. I would have chosen another program, knowing what I know now and the way they treated our class.