1. Current MS1 student. Baylor does not use preclinicals for AOA and is pass fail. Regarding internal rankings, some MS3/4's have told me there is some distinction for scoring in the top 1/6th of the class for preclinicals but has little to no bearing on matching (as evidenced by more than 1/6th of the class matching into competitive specialties).
2. Not sure for the incoming class, but none of our preclinical lecture-based classes were mandatory - they all had videos online to stream. Only in-person things were preceptorships, anatomy lab, OSCE-related things, TBL's off the top of my head. Weekly schedule varies in # of lectures, but they all finish by noon assuming you start at 8.
The incoming class is in for a treat - we have an absolutely stellar member of our class who goes great lengths to make in-house decks + tags associated AnKing cards. There were some small gripes on admin-related things (every school has this, right?) but as a whole, y'all will love it here.