Okay, the clinics post. I still don't know much about the research side of things, but I'll say what I can.
So typically, clinics begins in May of your 3rd year. Sometime during second year/early third year, you'll start having quick little lectures on how to plan your classes, declare your major, etc an will be given an excel sheet to help plan it all out. The excel sheet is initially really confusing, but then it magically makes sense. What rotations you are required to take depends on what major you declare, but everyone has to take the foundation rotations (Medicine and Surgery for Small animal, LA Medicine, Sx and ECC) no matter what you declare. After that, it depends on your interest and how many vacation rotations you have.
Everyone is guaranteed a 2 week vacation no matter how many elective credits you have. Then for x amount of elective credits, you can earn an additional two week vacation. These are really helpful for externships, studying for boards or if you just want the vacation. I would have easily had 12+ weeks, but I added some electives in last minute, so they couldn't be factored into my rotation schedule.
In regards to electives, Penn has pretty much everything you could want, except a designated wildlife or k9 rehab rotation, but there are some local places that do these and take students for externships so it's pretty easy to get them if you want them. And since we have such as high case load, every service is usually pretty busy (this can be good and bad as sometimes things get absolutely crazy), but you will get exposure. Some rotations are more hands on than others and we have some recent issues (in regards to getting more hands on experience) with our Surgery rotations, but my class is actively trying to change that for future classes. However, if you want some basic surgery experience, there are some awesome shelters in the area that allow you to be very hands on. I'm on Ortho next so if I hear of any updates on how the surgery rotation is going to work in the future, I'll update you all.
Additionally, if you want more time in clinics, you can start them as early as January of your 3rd year (which is what I did). We normally have two blocks of classes called Large and Small Animal block which are more detailed classes and offer some more hands on opportunities before entering clinics. You can skip one block, both blocks or no blocks. If you skip just one block, you'll get an extra 2.5 months of so of clinic time, however you are expected to do some of this time outside the hospital as they say they can't guarantee you spots within the hospital (that being said, I don't think anyone had any issues). If you skip both blocks, you get January-May as extra clinic time, but you just have to more externships planned. I also have friends who took both blocks and they still feel like they're getting enough clinic time. It just depends on what you want I guess.
As for the research side of things, many people contribute throughout the year and many do the NIH/Merial program over the summer. Those individuals that are the in VMD/PhD program do their classroom years first and then take the next 3-4 years off to do the PhD aspect of their program and then go into clinics after that.
Hope that helps, if you have more specific questions about actual electives and such just let me know!
