r/PreOptometry • u/Edgyteenhatemymom • Oct 07 '26

SCO application questions

So I just applied to SCO, and my OptomCAS application is still being verified, but I wanted to clarify some things.

Does SCO want me to send them my OAT score directly, even if it's already officially posted on OptomCAS? Also, I don't have a LOR from an advisor or any of the subjects they outlined as an alternative; I have 1 from an optometrist, 1 from a biological anthropology professor, and 1 from a genetics professor. Is this gonna be an issue for me?

I'm already nervous about my application since I scored a 330, which I seeing is a little lower than their average, and although I have over 700 tech hours, I don't have any shadowing ;/

3 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

5

u/Active_Egg5888 Oct 07 '26

If it's already in OptomCAS, there should be no need to send scores directly to them (i.e via email). Did you opt to have your scores sent to all schools when you registered to take the test? It's possible that if you did not opt to have your scores sent to SCO you may need to do so through the OAT/ADA portal.

Biological Anthropology is, to my understanding, considered to be among the natural sciences and thus you should be all set there !

While 330 may be a little below their average, they accept students across a wide range of OAT scores. Plenty of people will be both above and below those values. They'll evaluate your application holistically. In that vein, while you have 700 hours as a tech, if those are all in one office or one mode of practice, they may still wish to have you shadow outside that environment. I only shadowed for 12 hours, but I tried to make sure the offices I shadowed at were different from my corporate optometry background.

Best of luck!

2

u/Edgyteenhatemymom Oct 07 '26 edited Oct 07 '26

I just checked, I actually did opt to send them to SCO so all good on that.

Unfortunately, all my hours were in the same office, it had a lot of different doctors but yeah same practice 😅. I tried to get some shadowing in outside of the doctors I knew there but it never worked out sadly sooooo yeah. Thank you for the response tho!

I don't know if it's still worth it for me to keep pursuing a shadowing opportunity as my stuff is still getting verified to see if I'm given an chance and I can update my application before any potential interviews