You want to find places where the residents actually work smart and largely autonomous, not just hard.
Your first clue might be the residency programs that triple scrub basic cases or round on inpatients in huge groups like really only infectious disease or pedi oncology or some hero specialties do (assuming it's not a rare interesting F&A case, but that's usually called M&M or grand rounds). They aren't exactly maximizing their efficiency when they travel in packs... it just shows they take too many residents or they have that mistaken belief that working longer hours gets more done. Having more than one person on-call and a couple backup call people is also a sign of the herd of lemmings mentality.
There will be whole-group meetings, but those should be academics approximately weekly... definitely not rounding daily in that way. There will be double/triple scrub big cases (esp director out of respect), but they're not common. For the most part, one third of your residents will be off service any given time. So, you should see the residents basically divide and conquer:
First years: inpatients (hospital/ER/call), bit of surgery and add-ons, bit of studying, most of call
Second years: SURGERY, studying, bit of call or good add-on cases, looking for jobs
Third years: research, studying, best of surgery, admin stuff, leaving early
Rounds should just be a pgy1 or maybe two of them or maybe a pgy1 and a student or two. That is all you need. The attending will get there later and give direction, or you can ask a 2nd year if you truly get stuck or it is a brand new 1st year in July or Aug. 3rd years really have no business on rounds unless they want to talk to the nurse on that floor or something... they have done plenty of rounds for pod and off-service and would just be the pgy1's backup on a really bad emergent surgery or injury from ER.
You have to study when you can... typically when you aren't on call and you are done with your morning surgery. It might be evenings during first year while it is just after lunch time for most 2nd and 3rd year days, but there is always time to study. You can study and watch vids for the upcoming cases or your interest or boards or whatever.
A last, but key, sign to look for is the programs that let residents (esp seniors) can leave when the surgery for the day and other work is done (since they will start very early or stay late other days and balance it out). They might disappear to "library" or "office rotations" or whatever, but if it is 2pm or 3pm and the work is done, they shouldn't be obligated to stay and do nothing. Those places where the residents fear retribution or consequence from a babysitting director or chief or etc if they leave before 4pm or 5pm even on a slow day with little on the surgery schedule and not much to do are still out there, but they shouldn't be the norm and should lose a lot of interest from students.
My program had 4/yr, so it would go something like this... as you see, nearly all except the "floor" resident had substantial time to study at least a bit:
pgy1 inpatients rounds morning and re-round or new consults all day, meet attendings to round, answer ER calls + maybe get to scrub I&D or pop in on a surgery at main hospital
pgy1 hammertoes and neuroma and hammertoes, resident clinic/study afternoon, on call overnight
pgy1 off service
pgy1 off service
pgy2 second assisting with pgy3 with ankle fx block, study afternoon
pgy2 austin weil, Jones fx, hammertoes, look for jobs afternoon
pgy2 ankle scope, austin, TMA, resident clinic/study afternoon
pgy2 off service
pgy3 flatfoot, study a bit for board qual, long lunch, private office clinic afternoon (can leave that early if they want)
pgy3 ankle fx, haglund, bunion, hammertoes (will let pgy2 do), leave early
pgy3 lapidus, research afternoon, leave whenever they get tired of library but have phone on just in case pgy1 gets crazy case from ER
pgy3 off service (might be air quotes, might not... just never know with those 3rd years)
