What the PAVE Clinical Year Is Like: Rotations and Evaluations

The PAVE clinical year, the Evaluated Clinical Experience (ECE), is a year as a final-year veterinary student at an AVMA-accredited school. You follow the same rotations as the school's own students, in small and large animal services, with evening and weekend duty, and faculty grade you on every rotation to the same standard they use for everyone else. This article describes the year from what the AAVSB and the two schools with open ECE programs, Penn Vet and the University of Missouri, publish about it, as of October 2026.

For the rules (forms, eligibility, the 40-week standard, appeals), start with our complete guide to the PAVE ECE. This article is about the year itself. If you have not yet passed the Qualifying Science Examination, that comes first, and our QSE practice questions mapped to the 2027 outline are built for it.

Last verified on 6 October 2026 against the AAVSB's PAVE Standards and Policies (December 2025), the PAVE Candidate Information Handbook and the host schools' own pages. navleexam.com is not affiliated with AAVSB, AVMA, ICVA or PSI. Schools change their programs, so confirm details with your host school.