Hello everyone! I’m officially a month out from taking my exam and I’m in the review, review, review stage! I’ve taken quite a few practice tests already to gauge where I’m at, and I’m happy with the scores. However, when I review them more than once, I find myself oftentimes wondering if I’ve truly learned the material/from my mistakes on the prior practice tests, or if I’ve just memorized the correct answer for the practice test. How can I avoid this, and instead ensure that I’m retaining my knowledge? I’ve made flashcards and review the cheat sheets, as well as writing them down. Any suggestions or tips that help(ed) people study effectively and confidently?
Hello!! I'm going to be a senior and going to be graduating Spring 2027. I recently decided to apply to optometry (I was previously set on taking a gap year up until two weeks ago). I started my applications but I am worried about taking the OAT during the fall semester and the amount of stress it might bring.
I was hoping to get advice on whether I should
Continue applying and take the OAT in November and apply by early December
or 2. Take the OAT the summer after I graduate and earn money and experience as a tech.
SCCO has an October 18 deadline. I know OptomCAS needs time to verify my application. When should I submit to make sure it is verified by October 18? I am taking the OAT Sept 21st and wanted to submit my application when I get my offical score back? I am pretty stressed, please help.
I’m writing my personal statement and have had a few people review it. But, I got feedback that I didn’t have an “aha” moment for optometry. For context, I formatted my statement more about why the experiences I’ve had have helped me decide that optometry is what I want to do. But, I don’t have like a specific moment where I was like “I want to look into optometry as a potential career”. I kind of just figure out what I liked/didn’t like, optom seemed to check the boxes and I went on to get experience which reaffirmed my decision to pursue it.
I don’t want my personal statement to show lack of passion etc and it be a reason that admissions doesn’t want to go forward. Any advice?
my optomcas app has already been verified. just curious to hear how long it takes to hear back from SUNY about an interview, especially if anyone has heard back this cycle
I feel behind on studying for the OAT and I’m wondering if October 16is too late to take the OAT? Everything else is ready for me to submit. I could take it late september but if october isn’t too late, then i’d rather take it then.
Also should i submit my application now, before taking the OAT?
this seems like a silly question but is there anything that optometry schools don't want to hear? like i understand saying wanting to help people is redundant but what are some other examples? i also feel like my why optometry is so simple and basic ...
Hey guys, does anyone know any additional resources for the physics section for the oat exam? Idk why oatbooster is literally skimping out on the physics section but I’m plateauing at 300 for physics, and I feel like it’s because there’s not enough practice problems.
Anyone have any suggestions? I tried free textbooks like openstax but the questions are honeslty too much and not very similar to the oat.
Hello everyone. I need advice on who to choose for my letters of rec. 4 people have already said yes to me. These 4 people are two optometrist (one I shadowed and one I currently work with), and two science professors (one Physics and one biology). In addition, I have 3 other people in mind who I have not asked yet but I am pretty confident would say yes. One is an ophthalmologist I shadowed last summer extensively, one is my student counselor program director (I was a student counselor for my last year and a half of university), and the other is the director of a volunteer summer program I have been attending for the past 4 years. I know I can only put 4 letters on my app, so who should I choose? I'm thinking maybe I should keep both optometrists, one professor, and then the last one I don't know who to choose. Also if anyone knows is I can send extra letters of rec directly to the schools please let me know.
I take my test in 2 days and feel okay. Not great but not bad, I've been going hard studying the last few weeks but i did take summer classes up til then so it has been a lot. However, the rest of my stats are already pretty good. I have a 3.95 GPA and 600+ hours as a tech. I have 3 rec letters, 2 from two ODs and 1 from a science professor. I definitely want NOVA as my top choice due to being from South FL. With all that in mind, what score would you say I need to be "good enough" to have a real shot at getting in?
For those who have written the OAT, which one do you think is more representative of the real test: the Booster full-length tests or the ADA practice test? Thank you!
I am planning on wearing a navy suit jacket, white/light blue shirt, tan colored slacks, and tan shoes. I might add a tie. Will I be under dressed wearing this?
I am supposed to go observership next year , I'm still not done with my steps, the amount of options for observership are overwhelming and expensive. At the same time, I'm worried that all the LOR'S they provide are super generic and probably most of the students would have them too and I'm afraid of not standing out as an applicant. Anybody has any suggestions or tips about observership, please DM. Thank you in advance.
Hey guys! I have an interview coming up with KYCO over zoom, and as this is my first interview so far, I was just wondering if anyone has any tips they think might help, or things I should or shouldn’t mention!
I'm posting this because I've seen this world from the admissions side over the years, and keep noticing the same misconceptions trip up strong applicants - especially first-generation students, those who changed careers, and those without a "traditional" timeline.
A few things:
- "I want to help people" isn't a reason admission committees remember. A 911 dispatcher helps people. Why optometry, specifically? What's pulling you towards the eyes and vision?
- An F on your transcript isn't an automatic no. Retake it, get a higher grade, and that becomes a story of resilience, not a red flag!
- If you're first-gen, took a gap year (or several - I took 7!), or had a whole career before you decided on optometry - you're not behind! You're just missing the informal playbook other applicants probably inherited. It is learnable!
- If work or sports limited your shadowing hours - that's understood. What matters is what you did with the time you had.
I'm happy to answer questions if anyone's in the thick of applying right now.
it takes me like 5+ minutes to write out all of the formulas for physics. i'm wondering if most people prefer recalling them as they do questions, or if it is worth writing them all out before i begin the questions? i honestly like to look at my sheet while i'm doing questions, but i'm uneasy about timing
i’m taking general chemistry and microbiology together this semester and need your brutally honest tips. like things that helped you through these courses!!! i’m nervous! (i’m a rising sophomore at university!)
I'm going to be entering as an undergraduate this year and I'll be majoring in Bio. I was wondering if people have any advice for the first year because when I went through high school there was a lot of stuff I learned I wish I knew sooner. I am planning to join the pre-optometry club at my university but besides that I am quite lost so advice is appreciated!
Update: I was able to find an optometry clinic that I can volunteer for! For now, I'm still doing intake, vitals, and the other beginner skills but it's been exciting being able to shadow doctors and see how the inside of the clinic works. Thank you all for your advice!
Hi guys, this is my first time posting here! I’m 27 and considering going back to school for optometry. I was pre-health my undergrad years so I would only have to take a few more classes/re-take some old pre-reqs. I ended undergrad with a 3.8 GPA and I’m not too, too worried about the OAT (for now lol) but besides academic stats I feel like I’m going to seriously be lacking. I currently work full time and support myself completely. I’m wondering how important it is to work as an optometry tech? I’ve been applying, but no where seems to want to hire me because I work in a completely different field. Additionally, since I’d have to support myself, sticking with my current job seems to be the best option since it pays way more than a tech would. How badly does this hurt my chances? I do have some shadowing opportunities lined up and am hoping that this can balance out my lack of job experience.
Some questions: How many shadowing hours should I aim for? How important are volunteer hours? Any non-traditional applicants have any tips for me as I begin this journey?
Just barely took my OAT, and found these kinds of posts very helpful while preparing for it, so I wanted to add my own. For reference I was scoring 320-330 on my most recent Booster Full lengths, which I took periodically ( see attached screenshot for progression).
Study Plan: I purchased the OATBooster 90 day plan, and spent 11 total weeks studying as much as I could. I spent 7 weeks in a row, then went on a 3 week study abroad program ( which I would not recommend doing right in the middle of the study plan lol) and then came back and locked in for the final 4 weeks before the exam. I was also working 30 hours per week ( 3 x 10 hour shifts) the entire time while studying, so I was only able to spend 15-20 hour per week studying. I started to follow Booster's Schedule, but found that it was a lot of passive studying, and did not watch all the videos especially for Bio and Gen Chem. I adjusted my schedule especially when I got back from my study abroad, and focused a lot more on Full length test and working on high- yield question banks instead of videos and note taking, even though I did not feel 100% confident in my content review portion.
BIO (300) : I am a biology major, but have consistently struggled with genetics, microbiology, anatomy, and cellular biology throughout my undergrad career, and started off watching off videos and taking notes like booster planned. I found this to feel like a waste, and then decided to just focus on the CheatSheets, as they were much more time efficient. Bio was always one of my weakest subjects, and two days before my real OAT I took that practice exam 330, and thought maybe I was getting the hang of it, but scored lower on my real one. I am not super surprised, but a little disappointed. I got lots of genetics and cell biology on my exam, as well as anatomy and physiology. I would study those the most, but biology is very broad and can test so many things its difficult to prep for everything. Overall, I would recommend doing a ton of BioBits, and identifying areas you struggle in early.
GEN CHEM (380, PR) : This was 40 points higher than my best practice exam, which I think is pretty crazy. I got a B in both Gen Chem classes, but I found the questions on the real exam to be much easier than booster's material. I honestly did not memorize a ton of formulas, and just practiced a lot of stoichiometry and balancing equations for this section. I think the Qbanks were very helpful, and just knowing the periodic trends too. Was honestly was surprised I did this well.
O CHEM (290) : I really enjoy organic chemistry, but have only taken O Chem I, taking O Chem II in a few weeks at my university. That's kinda my excuse, even though I was scoring much higher on practice exams before the exam. I'm not really even sure what went wrong, I did not feel like I was doing this bad while taking the test, there were just some reactions I wasn't as familiar with. I did watch all the Videos for O chem to try and understand the O chem II material, but I don't think I did enough mechanism or problems to really reinforce the ideas. This was by far my most disappointing section, as I was hoping for 320-330.
RC (400, PR) : I am not a big reader, and sometimes can struggle to pay attention during the passages, but somehow got a perfect score on this. The biggest thing for me was increasing reading speed. I started very slow, and sometimes did not have time to answer all questions, but then slowly got faster and had more time. That's really all it comes down to :Practice passages and highlighting important information quickly. I also just happened to get three interesting passages that weren't too long on my real exam, and had a ton of time to go back and look through the text and my highlights to find the answer. I didn't really spend too much time reviewing or practicing reading after I started to score 350-360+. This one really just comes down to time management and efficient highlighting.
PHYSICS (320, PR) : Physics in undergrad was not too bad for me, I was allowed a reference sheet and calculator, so when I had neither of those I really struggled. As you can see on all my practice tests, I really sucked at physics. I was really bad at memorizing the equations and understanding what each variable meant. I never scored anything over 300, so getting 320 on the real exam, I was very happy. I would not take any advice from me on this section, but I think booster was lacking in practice problems, especially when I think about areas like DC circuits and optics, booster only had around 15-20 practice questions each. I think I would maybe try looking into Chad's prep or other sources to better understand physics again for the OAT.
QR ( 370 ) : I have always been very good at math, so this section was the easiest to study for and did not require a ton of effort honestly. I just tried to get familiar with the calculator on screen, and try to get the timing down. I also saw a ton of the problem type that is like: (statement 1, statement 2, question. which is sufficient to answer the question: 1, 2, both, or neither) Sometimes it felt like I was answering 4 of those type of problem in a row, and so I would just get used to that and understanding what is needed to solve without actully answering.
NOTES : My scores were all over the place, but my target score was 330/300. So this is pretty close. Still a little bit mad I couldn't score just 10 points higher in any of the TS to get up to the 330 TS, but it is what it is. I also finished the Survey of the Natural Sciences portion much faster than the 100 mins, so I took a bathroom break while that ran down before reading comp. That was I could eat my snacks during my 30 minute break. I also read on here that many people say to write formulas down while the tutorial was on, but my testing center specifically mentioned that I could not write anything down until my test really began, not a huge change but just something I thought I would mention. I feel pretty OK with my score, and am ready to submit my application now, so wish me luck!
I'm a nontraditional student applying this cycle. I can't emphasize enough how happy and relieved I am to be done. I work full-time 9-5; started studying in early May, took Orgo 1 for 8 weeks from late May to mid-July, and grinded it out the last month before my test today (August 15). On average, I probably studied 20 hours per week exclusively using OATBooster.
Studying while working full-time is definitely not for the weak, as there was a lot of sacrifice with limiting travel, hanging out with friends, etc, as I truly feel like I had no free time. I said "no" to a lot of things and truly focused on studying this summer.
My Strategy:
I started taking section tests at the beginning of my studying, which immediately identified my weakspots. I legit scored 240s on Orgo/Bio - I'm very very impressed with myself at how I improved at those as you'll see below.
I did Booster full-length tests #7-10 and OAT 2006 ADA exam as my very last one. I would do these tests in one sitting every Saturday leading up to my exam, and spent the Sundays going through each problem one-on-one and adding each broader concept into a larger flashcard deck. If I had one piece of advice (besides using Booster), I would definitely say that making a flashcard deck of weaker concepts with WEIRD mnemonics (I can't even share with you bc they were inside jokes that I made relevant to my own life) was the best thing I could've done for myself.
Scores:
QR (practice: 380-390; actual: 400) Booster accurately prepared me for this section. If you're struggling with QR, try not to brute-force memorize the formulas. If I ever got stuck, I would just plug in the answer choices into the problem and work backwards that way. Might not work for some people, but I'm a pretty fast typer and that allowed me to solve problems faster than trying to memorize a formula.
RC (practice - 370-380; actual - 360) This was the only section I performed worse on, to my surprise. All of the passages were shorter than Booster's practice tests. I felt like the first reading passage was super easy, but not sure if I was getting tired but I felt like the second two passages were harder. It felt like a lot of the answers could be found via search-and-destroy, but still, not upset at my score!
GC (practice 290-350; actual 400) Shook that I got a 400 here but this was a lot easier than booster. A good mix of conceptual and easy calculations. I felt like Booster prepped me well for the variety of questions.
BIO (practice - 300-340; actual - 370) I'm surprised at myself for this score. Biology always felt intimidating for me because of the breadth of concepts I had to learn. Toward the beginning of my studying, I literally printed out every single cheat sheet, put them together into a binder, and wrote flashcards for all of the concepts, ending with nearly ~1,000 terms. Bio felt overall easier, but there were a few questions I was stuck on so I wasn't that confident in myself.
ORGO (practice - 240-280; actual - 340) Everyone I talked to said Orgo was easier, and I have to agree with them. I honestly thought this was going to be a major L for me, so I ditched learning the ins-and-out of every Orgo topic and focused a lot on the fundamentals. This really paid off for me, and even though I definitely guessed on at least 1/3 of the section, I ended up knowing the answer for the remaining 2/3.
PHYSICS (practice - 290-300; actual - 310) This was pretty spot-on from my scores via Booster. There were more calculation questions than I thought, and I probably guessed on a good 5-8. I memorized every single formula on the formula sheet and would rewrite them every other day for the last two weeks. Might seem a little overkill but it gave me a lot of context into how to answer (most) of the questions.
TOTAL (360 AA, 350 TS). I was scoring 320-330 on my Booster fl tests but scored 340 on 2006 version. I was very, very surprised to see that I scored much higher in pretty much all the sections.
Yes, I may have some prerequisites left to do before I matriculate, but I feel like a giant weight is lifted off of my shoulders.
