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About ACVP

ACVP

American College of Veterinary Pathologists
2424 American Lane
Madison, WI 53704

Telephone: +1-608-443-2466
Fax: +1-608-443-2474
email: info@acvp.org

 

Certifying Exam Information

In order to certify professional competency, the College has established standards of training and experience, and two certifying examinations recognized by the American Board of Veterinary Specialties of the American Veterinary Medical Association. For eligibility to sit the examination, the candidate must have satisfactory standing in the profession; graduated from a recognized college or school of veterinary medicine or be legally qualified to practice veterinary medicine; and completed training adequate to acquire knowledge sufficient to assume responsibility for the broad spectrum of assessment and interpretation of specimens, problems and situations encountered by veterinary pathologists.

Candidates for certification may be examined either in Veterinary Anatomic Pathology or Veterinary Clinical Pathology.

Members, please consider applying to serve as an examination proctor.

Certifying Exam Dates

Examination News for 2013 and Beyond

New Examination Style
Gross images for the gross pathology section of the certifying examination are either presented as a single image or alongside a second, related image with results from an ancillary diagnostic technique that is normally available on the gross necropsy floor. Examples of ancillary testing include but are not limited to impression smears, scrapings, Wood's lamp, or quick stains. Read more.

Maintenance of Certification
Beginning in 2016, newly-issued Diplomate certificates will be time dated, and these Diplomates will be required to fulfill ACVP-developed requirements to maintain their certification. The evaluation of Diplomates for maintenance of certification will occur every 10 years from the date of their initial certification. The requirements and procedures for documentation of this maintenance of certification program are under development by the ACVP. This webpage will be updated with the current information when it becomes available. The ACVP will not rescind an initial certificate unless a date of expiration was a condition of the original certification.

Newsletter Articles:

Application and Information

Examination Instructions

Anatomic Pathology

Clinical Pathology

Studying for the Examination

Reading Lists for the 2013 Examination

Note that reading lists are posted AFTER each year's exam and provide the source of the exam questions for the year indicated. Therefore, reading lists will always be a year behind. They are not meant to be comprehensive nor do they indicate what the candidates for the next year's exam should read. However, the sources for the exam questions do tend to come from roughly the same sources each year.

Sample Questions

Statistical Evaluation of Multiple Choice Questions
Each section which is composed of multiple choice questions is graded by computer and evaluated statistically. Representative multiple choice questions from previous years are presented below with their specific statistical evaluations included.

  • PROP represents the proportion of candidates taking that section who responded with the correct answer.
  • RPBI (Biserial Correlation) is a correlation coefficient which indicates the relationship between examinees' performance on a given question compared to their success in that section overall. In general, an ideal value will be greater than 0.3 and indicates the degree to which examinees who performed well on a given question were those that performed well on the section overall.

Anatomic Pathology

Clinical Pathology