My D has taken the Modern Medicine course at Duke TIP -Davidson. The curriculum was extremely unique. This was not material that is covered in biology classes, and is most similar to first-year medical school curriculum. It was very challenging, but manageable. There was a large amount of "homework" outside of the class, which was unlike the other classes taught there from what I understand. None of the kids had been exposed to more than a fraction of the material before.
The director of summer studies programs at TIP says that they try to create classes that are not standard fare - not the usual biology, chemistry, history, etc - but classes that draw on different disciplines and put together in unusual ways. In looking at TIP vs CTY, that seems to be a slight difference in philosophy. CTY offers a lot of accelerated science classes (fast-paced biology, chemistry, etc) that TIP does not offer.
The reason my D loves TIP (and is planning to do it again this year) is that the class is so different from anything she is exposed to at school. The value of these programs, in my opinion, is not to provide acceleration per se, but to get the kids interested in something outside the usual curriculum, at a pace and intensity that is more appropriate for their abilites and with similarly-talented peers.
I'm not familiar with the genetics class, but since it is restricted to rising 10th and 11th grades, I would think that anyone with reasonable biology background would do fine.
