I'm going to briefly come out of retirement to share some facts that I hope will fuel your consideration of the EVMS Med Masters program. To review, I'm an EVMS M2 in my late 40's, formerly an engineering manager who did cause/cost/risk analysis every day, and a graduate of the med masters in 2011.
(Oh no, too much text? Oh no, no clean formula to follow? Oh no, you might have to read and reason instead of following advice? Yes. That's what doctors have to do. If you are looking for simple clean answers to your complex med school admissions problems, you aren't going to find them. At least show this to your parents if you can't comprehend it.)
If I can offer one single piece of advice to prospective med masters, it's to be realistic about what coming to Norfolk means now and what it does not mean now. Last year's MM class and this year's MM class cannot tell you what to expect. Regardless, the med masters is still a really solid academic program, and it will basically help your chances at US MD, as will any terminal masters hosted at a US MD school. My sole problem with the MM program is that expectations and intentions are not clearly communicated by EVMS, not before, not during, and not after. EVMS needs to tell you, preferably on evms.edu and aamc.org and here on SDN, that the med masters is now comparable to the big programs like Drexel, and that the primary purpose of doing EVMS MM is no longer to get into EVMS MD. It's not enough to just backtrack and say on the website that it's an academic enhancer, because the program has a reputation that is no longer applicable. I am absolutely baffled why this communication isn't happening. People move cross country to do the med masters and then they find out it's not what they thought. This hurts my heart.
Here are some factish-facts.
1. EVMS MD match lists started to be interesting a few years ago, and this trend has continued. While there is still a dominant regional FM/IM/Peds flavor, there's now an abundance of national matching in competitive specialties. Sure, every lower tier US MD school will tout their one or two killer matches, but I challenge you to find and review the 2014 match list and see that there are 7 epic matches (including UCSF derm & Stanford uro) and a rather disproportionally high count of very competitive specialties such as ophtho/oto/neurosurg/uro/derm/vasc, all over the country. Those premeds who would rule out EVMS for its match list no longer do so. Thus, EVMS MD gets LOTS MORE applications than it did a few years ago, and this should be a factor in considering EVMS MM.
2. EVMS MD '16 and '17 are half out of state. (Fundamentally this happened to bring in more money in the absence of federal and state funding due to the 2008 global economic meltdown, no I'm not kidding, not a political statement. Those who say it's because EVMS is "greedy" are ignorant of world events and of basic economics.) But: is the increased OOS ratio a cause of, or is it an effect of, the better national match? Probably both. EVMS MD has boatloads of students from CA, NY, MA, MI, FL where there are few-ish instate seats to go with instate stats above the national averages. Those students have the networks and the numbers to do well back home, and they sure do help make EVMS look like a champ.
3. EVMS MD cost of attendance is effectively the highest out of state number in the country. Schools with a higher OOS COA don't take more than a couple OOS students; again, EVMS takes half OOS. Yearly cost of attendance for OOS who need to borrow is over $80k. Almost $90k for M3 alone, which is what the normal total bill for a public med school was less than a decade ago.
Those are the factish facts. And here are my opinions based on those facts.
1. EVMS MD is now harder to get into than ever. Of course this means fewer med masters will get accepted. More MM's + more MD applicants + more quality in the applicant pool. Simple math. Obviously the MM->MD percentage is falling but the count is going to fall as well.
2. EVMS MD does not reserve spaces for current nor former med masters. A returning med masters isn't taking a current med masters spot. Current med masters don't even enter the applicant pool until the rest of the pool has been all but handled. The fate of the current med masters is totally dependent on a much more impressive waitlist than prior years. The fate of future med masters is largely dependent on whether EVMS MD will continue to offer a guaranteed interview to MMs. Please stop looking for some formula that explains your odds of going straight from EVMS MM to EVMS MD because there is no formula. You will get not one single hint as to how this year is going to go until the week after graduation, and you will not know the immediate results for MM14 until August.
3. On SDN I continue to see "30-40" as the number of med masters who will get EVMS MD seats. If this is something I started or implied or hinted at in my prior posts, I apologize, because it's pure speculation. There is absolutely no basis for predicting the number of current med masters who will get EVMS MD seats.
4. If you are from outside Virginia, don't apply MD until after you complete the med masters, unless your prior app year resulted in interviews and waitlists, and even then I recommend against. It's just way too hard to figure out the timing and finances and where you're supposed to live and whether you should get a job and then 3 months after graduation, after you've gnawed your fingers off, you realize oh whoops you're not in med school and it's too late to apply now. If you wait to apply until after completing the med masters, and then apply early and broadly, then you maximize your chances of getting into a med school that isn't the most expensive in the country. Or, plan on using your post-MM year to get Virginia residency. Just please don't be passive.
5. If you are from inside Virginia, assume you'll do better by applying after the med masters, and decide whether you want to gamble. I think it's 50/50 whether you should apply same-year or not, mostly depending on your stats before MM.
6. Current med masters need to be ready to turn around a fresh AMCAS right after graduation, and hope they don't need it.
None of the above should be news to those who have kept up on discussions in this forum. And now I'm going back to retirement.
Best of luck to you.