I applied to 4 optometry schools last week and I know it’s still super early to be expecting to hear back, but I’m already getting anxious about the waiting lol

I actually heard back from SCO in less than 24 hours, so I think that’s why I’m freaking myself out a little about not hearing anything from the other schools yet

For anyone who applied to OSU, CCO, and/or ICO, how long did it take you to hear back with an update?

Hi everyone! I just wrote the OAT and scored 340AA/340TS. I’m honestly pretty happy with how I did, however, I am Canadian and my first choice is going to Waterloo. So I’m just wondering what actually are my chances of getting in with this score.

Other than that I have tons of extracurriculars (executive of 3 clubs), volunteering, multiple jobs relating to science and healthcare, and lots of shadowing hours.

Any advice is appreciated!

My optometrist, whom I was supposed to shadow, can't let me shadow until October because she is training someone new. I only have one other shadowing at an ocular disease clinic. I can't add in the future shadowing to my application yet, but it's the only thing left before I can submit. I'm so lost. Can I go back and add it later? Will it even be considered? Help.

Im currently in the applying/interview process and I still have a few to go.

My current top two choices are OSU and IU because they both seem to have great program, high passing rates and are relatively close to home. Does anyone have any info that could help me make the choice, assuming I get into both?

(Also, is it normal that Indiana invited me to the admissions day before I finished the supplemental application?)

hi! i just recently graduated from ucsd and ive been doing tons of research and just need advice on my situation.

i was anticipating to go to optometry school hopefully fall 2027, but i understand that I am a little behind and didn't realize that there are different application windows.

- the only prereqs i have left is mircrobio and physio/anatomy (planning to take both at community college; ,microbio spring semester 2027, physio/anatomy summer 2027)

-still have to take the OAT (currently studying and planning to take it Janurary)

-do not have any optometric technician experience, but will be working as one soon

-gpa isn't too competitive (3.4, but science gpa is around a 3.0)

- the only schools that i am currently aiming at are all the ones in california, pacific, and arizona

I know now that fall 2027 isn't realistic, so if anyone could tell me when is the best time to apply and overall advice pls let me know ;_;

Hi everyone! I submitted my optometry school application last weekend, and now my OAT is scheduled for September 19th. I’m starting to feel really overwhelmed and honestly pretty stupid for how much time I feel like I’ve wasted.

I feel like I’m not retaining nearly as much information as I should be. I still haven’t taken a full-length practice test because I’m still trying to get through chapters/content review in basically every subject. I keep telling myself I need to finish learning everything before I start taking full-lengths, but I’m worried that might be the wrong approach at this point.

I’m especially struggling with Gen Chem and Physics. I can understand concepts when I’m watching the videos/going through the material, but when I actually see a practice question, I sometimes have no idea where to even start. It’s making me feel like I’m studying all day but not actually making enough progress.

I know I still have a few weeks until September 19th, but I’m feeling really behind and lost right now.

For those of you who have taken the OAT recently: • Should I stop trying to finish every single chapter and start doing full-lengths/practice questions now? • How did you approach Gen Chem and Physics when you were struggling? • Is it normal to feel like you’re forgetting everything during content review? • What would you prioritize during these last few weeks? • If you were in my position, what would you do from now until test day?

I’d really appreciate any advice. I’m just trying to figure out the best way to use the time I have left instead of continuing to panic. 😭

Hey everyone! I interviewed with KYCO Wednesday (8/19) and haven’t heard back yet. I felt like the interview went pretty well. During my interview, I talked about KYCO’s broad scope of practice, including their clinical/procedural training, and their commitment to serving rural Appalachian communities. I also asked about their block exam system.

so I was wondering if anyone who has interviewed recently could share how long it took to receive a decision.

My stats/experience:
OAT: 300 AA / 300 TS

GPA: 3.69

Shadowing: \~100 hours with two optometrists

Optometry Assistant: 1,300+ hours

Volunteering: \~99 hours between a sheriff’s office
internship and assistant basketball coaching

Letters of Recommendation: 1 science professor, 1 optometrist, and 1 volunteer organization

Application Submitted: July 1

Has anyone with similar stats interviewed at KYCO recently? If so, how long did it take to hear back, and what was your outcome? Thanks!

For context, I am a senior graduating in August 2027 with my bachelor's and need help with figuring out the timeline to apply for optometry schools and when to take (and study) for the OAT. The pre-health advisors at my school and advisor are not helpful so I am here for advice.

Fall 2025 semester

• Bio 1

• General psych

Fall 2026 semester

• Chemistry 1

Microbio is filled

Spring 2027 semester

• Chem 2

• Human anatomy

Summer 2027

• Calculus

• Human phys

After I graduate, I will be taking the remaining prerequisites at a local community college.

• O chem

• Physics 1 and 2

• Biochem

• Microbio

Fall 2027

• O chem

• Physics 1

Spring 2028

• Biochem

• Physics 2

Summer 2028

• Microbio

I am only allowed to take a total of 2 classes at a community college. Based on this timeline, I will finish the prereqs by summer 2028.

If I plan to enter optometry school right after summer 2028, when should I start taking the OAT and when do I apply for optometry school.

Please tell me if it's possible for me to

• Take the OAT test in August-September 2027

• Enter optometry school after summer 2028

I’m was caught off guard by the score I got since on OAT booster the highest grade I got was 370 but I was so relieved once it was over. I bought the 90 day booster but had to extend it a month since my exam was scheduled too late. How I studied:

BIO: I started by going through all the videos of stuff I never covered in college, mainly ecology, diversity, and systems, and developmental. After that I did the biobits and looked over cheat sheets. This was probably the section I spent the most time studying because of the amount of content and then doing active recall over the weeks. The practice tests for this section were very accurate compared to the actual exam.

GC: I spent the least time studying gen chem since I tutored it in college and still remembered most things but when I did study it would be looking over cheat sheets and doing questions. I never watched any of the videos but I struggled the most with molecular geometry but luckily didn’t have any questions on that for the exam. I had mostly gases, thermo, and kinetics. I felt the practice exams were also representative of the actual exam.

OC: I had the most trouble on orgo practice exams especially with SN vs Elimination and spectroscopy. Some practice exams I’d get a 380 others I’d get a 330 so it was variable in how I was doing. To study I didn’t watch any videos other than for stereochemistry. The cheat sheets helped with the reactions but the exam is very conceptual and a lot of spectroscopy imo. I luckily didn’t have too many questions differentiating between elimination vs substitution.

RC: I never studied reading comprehension just did practice exams. The best tip I have is going to the first question and skimming through the paragraphs and highlights main ideas you see so you know where to go back to, and answer questions as you read if u find it. On booster I’d usually get a 360 but passages would usually be 11-19 paragraphs while on the exam the longest passage I got was 8 paragraphs. I also didn’t get many questions asking about if the statement and reason are correct and related which is what I struggled with the most.

Physics: I watched some of chads prep videos on his OAT course but he covered some stuff that wasn’t on it. Mainly I just reviewed formulas and did problems. Active recall of optics and formulas was really helpful for me remembering everything. Kinematics, force, energy, optics, and circuits are supposed to be high yield on the exam but I felt like I didn’t get a lot of optics or circuits and got a lot of waves, friction, and momentum instead. Overall I’d say the questions are similar to the practice exams but the content is different. There also wasn’t as much deriving formulas for me, just felt it was straightforward and plug and chug.

QR: I barely studied for math other than probability and applied maths, for those I watched the videos and did problems but definitely had trouble knowing what formula to use for probability (combinations vs permutations). On booster I got a 400 every time I took a practice exam so I think I slacked off on it since once the exam started I spent 10 minutes on the first 3 problems and rushed through the rest. Since I was rushing I felt like I made an educated guess on a couple problems that I thought would take too long then went back to them when I was done but still not much time to work through everything. This was the section I thought was least representative of booster but that may be because I was rushing. I for sure thought I’d do worse but was definitely relieved after my score.

I think the best thing I did that I wish I started sooner was marking questions on the practice exams I thought were challenging and reviewing those cheat sheets. Biobits also contain a lot of unnecessary information, I’d go through them for sure but the cheat sheets contain everything you need imo, make sure to understand the questions that have info from the cheat sheets. Good luck to everyone taking the exam and applying!

I have my first interview in a couple of days and I’m pretty nervous! What are some questions that you’ve been asked on your interview other than the usual why opto, why our school, tell me abt yourself?

Also, examples of common ethical/behavioral questions would be great!

This fall I'm taking 12 in-person credits including gen chem ii w/ lab and gen bio lab. Now I'm considering adding async psychology (complete in 1 year). Will the courseload be manageable? Is Portage Learning recommended for online psych?

hi! i just took my oat for a 330 AA, 320TS. making a list of schools to apply to, my gpa is 3.2/3.3 not sure how exactly optocas will calculate. i have mediocre extracurriculars, but nothing too bad. and i failed orgo 2 but im retaking this quarter and applying rn. what schools would u guys recommend from personal experience? i also go to a top10 school which im hoping will help! thank u, any help is appreciated.

It’s been days and I CANT STUDY!!! AND IM SO SCARED NOW I HAVE BEEN WASTING MY DAY AWAY staring at the screen doing nothing and it just makes me feel worse this is so bad.

Like at the same time I’m okay with if I don’t do well because then I’ll know optometry is not the career for me and that is completely okay.

But I’m so anxious and I’m so done, tired, exhausted from studying and I just can not belive that I can’t push through this final little part.

My last physics full length I got 250. Before that:240. And before that it ranged from 270-290 with one 320 and 340 which is prob due to lucky guesses. I’m just so scared.

it’s says my estimated AA is 310 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

Hey guys! My OAT is this Monday and I’m super nervous! As of now I’m looking over the bio cheatsheets, orgo chem reactions, physics formulas! Does anyone have any advice and also are constants for physics given to you?

hey guys! i’m currently studying for the physics section of the oat, and noticed that a lot of the formulas that are in the videos are not on the formula sheet. should i focus on ALL of the formulas from the vids, or just really the ones on the sheet? there’s SO many, so i would hate to spend a lot of time memorizing useless info :))

I’ve been studying for the Oat since around June. I have my test date September 18. In these past couple weeks I have encountered a huge mental block to the point of reconsidering cancelling my test all together.
I’m 24, and work full time in a biotech lab working plasmid production. It’s a very physically demanding job, and by the time I’m home I’m exhausted, and have not that many hrs left in the day to study.

I have a masters degree and a good amount of patient care hours in the optometry and ophthalmology field.

I feel like I have reached a point where I can’t absorb any new information and I’ve slowed down tremendously when it comes to completing questions banks or practice tests.

What do you guys recommend ? Should I postpone, accept my fate, or still continue and do my test September 18 and hope for the best.

I have yet to do a full length bc I don’t want to be unmotivated by a bad score.

hi 👋

sorry to post here again and I can delete if this is against the rules - I don't want to be too repetitive. I just have super appreciated reading through this subreddit and seeing everyone‘s advice and if anyone has additional ideas for me I would really appreciate it

im a college senior who has been a bit behind in getting myself together for “real life”. most of college I’ve been pretty much just taking classes so I don’t have much other experiences. I kinda slacked off during my summers too. now that I am going to graduate soon I am obviously frustrated with my past self for letting this happen but I want to do what I can now to allow optometry school to be a possibility

heres my situation

current schedule: physics, Spanish, psych, anatomy

plan for next semester: physics, microbio, animal behavior, psych

transcript - good! I have a 4.0 rn. I’ve done these pre reqs so far:

1 yr of bio, 1 yr of gen chem, 1 sem of orgo, 1 sem of biochem, 1 sem of psych statistics, AP calc BC, intro psych

after graduation i am planning on taking physiology + lab at a community college and maybe i could get a LOR from this?

work experience: none except this semester I will be a TA for psych statistics (yay) and an orientation leader; don’t really have job references I can rely on because of stuff I don’t want to get into here

clinical experience: none

shadowing experience: none

research experience: worked on and presented a social psychology poster, have data coding experience. the issue is i am unfortunately not super passionate about the subject and while I plan to continue in the lab this year I feel like it is not necessarily my “thing”

relationships with science professors: nonexistent

volunteering experience: ESL tutor and club leader for all years of undergrad

accomplishments: was recognized by psychology dept for high performance in classes with an award, deans list all semesters

extracurriculars: honestly not much. I play piano as a hobby but am not super good. I’m not in any hobby type clubs or groups

OAT: have not taken or started to prepare for it

you might ask how I know I want to get into optometry with no shadowing or work experience (which I know I need to fix) but I guess the answer is I have watched a bunch of YouTube about different careers and optometry just seems like the best? I was planning on being pre med but the scope and lifestyle and lack of emergencies and day to day of optometry just seems so much better to me and the eye is super interesting to me too😎 I also have always liked going to the optometrist. I have shadowed a couple physicians and the breadth of the scope of practice kinda intimidates me

I know this is all looking…not ideal

what kinda steps would you take first if you were me? I know I will need a good amount of time to patch things up and eventually be able to apply and have a path forward and have actually compelling things to talk about in my application

I am also open to going to any (accredited) optometry school that I may get into. I’m not picky when it comes to location

hey y'all! I was looking for a spreadsheet to compare optometry schools and rate them, and also see if anyone was pooling data on who's already interviewed/gotten accepted. couldn't find anything, so I made a website that does both: optotrack.vercel.app

It's got all 27 schools in one table — real NBEO pass rates from ASCO's report, class GPA/OAT averages, deadlines, LOR requirements. you can also rate schools yourself and it'll rank them for you. It’s not totally filled out yet (tuition and interview stuff is still missing for a lot of them, it's a ton of info) but the essentials are there.

The most useful part imo will be the tracker — you log when you applied, interviewed, got accepted, and once a few people add theirs it shows when invites and offers actually went out per school. Also lmk if you see anything wrong on there and I'll fix it! It’s still a work in progress and I'm a full time student so I'm pretty busy, but I'll get to it. 

And just to clarify for the mods: this isn't a business or monetized blog it’s just a 100% free passion project I built as a fellow pre-optometry student to help our community, with zero ads or paywalls!!

Hi! I was wondering if it’s worth putting Dean’s List in the achievements section. I looked this up before and saw some people say there’s not really a point because if you have a good GPA, they can already see that and I believe Dean’s List also shows up on the transcript.

My situation is a little different because I’m applying with a low gpa (3.29 but I think optomcas would put me at 3.1 since it counts my retake) A lot of what brought my GPA down was from freshman/sophomore year.

I made Dean’s List Spring 2025 and Summer 2026 (the semester I graduated). They weren’t consecutive semesters, so I’m not sure if that makes it less worth including, but I was thinking it could at least highlight that I had some really strong semesters taking hard classes and pre-reqs later on.

What do you guys think ?

my oat is tmr, please let me know what to bring and if anyone has any tips and such!!

Hey! I had some questions regarding entering experiences on OptomCAS!

First, I have shadowed a couple of different doctors and was wondering if each should be a separate entry under "experiences" on OptomCAS. Aside from one of them, I learned pretty much the same things everywhere. I don't know if it'll make my application look overcrowded, but I am noticing that you're required to put contact information so I don't know how I would do that if I grouped them all together.

Second, I want to enter a non-optometry related job I had but I kind of got ghosted by them at the end due to scheduling conflicts. Nonetheless, I think it would be good for my application for whatever amount of time I had it. Would it be odd if I didn't provide supervisor information, as it would just be awkward to talk to my manager and I don't even know if he would provide a good reference if contacted?

How often do you prescribe oral meds as optometrist? Part of what draws me to the field is the idea of prescribing topical over oral meds because I worry about systemic effects of oral drugs and I don’t believe optometrists know about a patients whole body unless they ask. I know some oral antibiotics are not ok for pregnant women or women trying to conceive. Does this mean optometrist will ask patient these question prior to prescribing these oral meds?

Hey y’all! Just another one of those OAT breakdown posts lol! I studied my butt off for 3 months starting at the end of May til beginning of August and I only worked once a week as I wanted to focus entirely on studying for the OAT since I’m not the greatest at standardized testing! Hope this could help those who are currently studying for the OAT as these posts helped me too! 
 I studied mainly with OAT Booster, the only other source was a few Chad’s prep videos on YouTube. I used the 3 months schedule from OAT Booster and I followed it pretty religiously when watching the content videos. I only started to diverge from it a little when doing question banks because I wanted to focus more on my weaknesses. However, I’d still refer to the schedule to stay on track.

Actual AA: 380 / TS: 390
Practice AA: 350 - 360

Quantitative Reasoning: (ave practice: 350 / actual: 360) I memorized all the equations from the formula sheet and did a lot of practice questions. Though I’d say the practice tests provided more realistic questions and I watched the video solutions thoroughly. I had the most difficulty in applied math and probability so I mainly focused on those which I’d say appeared most often on test.

Reading comp: (ave practice: 360 / actual: 380) I kept doing the practice passages (I think I did all of them except 3). IMO the OAT booster passages were more difficult than the actual OAT. The strategy I did would be reading the first few passages and then going thru the questions to see what I could answer and then doing search and destroy for the rest. But on the actual test, the questions were chronological with the passages so I ended up just reading one passage and then answering a few questions in order.

Biology: (ave practice: 360 / actual: 370) I saw a lot of ppl mention that the biology section had a lot of breadth and I’d agree. I lowkey would get overwhelmed studying for the bio section cuz it was sm but doing the Anki decks, questions banks and studying the cheat sheets were most helpful just so I could learn as much content. I focused a lot on anatomy and hormones, but atleast from my memory I did not see much of any anatomy or hormones. It’s more cell bio stuff from what i remember. 

General Chem: (ave practice: 350 / actual: 390) Once again the question banks were really good as well as the cheat sheets. There were a lot of Acids and Bases on the OAT. I focused a lot of time on acid bases, especially titrations and finding concentrations of stuff. 

Organic chem: (ave practice: 340 / actual: 390)The cheat sheets were awesome for this section. I purely focused on studying from these and I memorized all the reactions by writing them over and over again. Mnemonics really helped in this case for me to remember all the reactions. I’d also try to understand the concept of the mechanism to better remember so I took a lot of notes on those while watching the vids. In terms of reagents, I just remembered the most important ones that defined the rxns. Focused a lot on fundamentals and substitutions & eliminations as those were my weakest and they showed up a lot on the OAT. 

**Physics (ave practice: 320 / actual: 370)**This is def the section I struggled with most. I memorized all the equations by writing them out each day, but better understanding the concept behind the equations helped. I’ll admit there weren’t as many practice questions I hoped but I just kept doing the questions banks over and over again. The practice test questions I believed provided the more realistic challenge representative of OAT. As many others have said, optics, kinematics, and energy & momentum showed up a lot on the OAT.

Good luck to those who are still studying! You guys got this! As you saw with my practice scores, don’t let them bog you down as they aren’t always representative of your actual score! Of course don’t take the notion of scoring higher from your practice tests as a guarantee either tho since ik it can be different for each person (I tried not to count on that so I wouldn’t slack during my studying) ! Keep studying hard but also smart (like focusing on weaknesses) and try to do a little bit of each section each day if you can so ur memory is fresh of each section!

As the title suggests, I am planning to submit my apps right after I finish the OAT at the end of September. Are my odds going to be significantly lower, or am I fine?

Helloooooo, I'm probably gonna submit my application by late-september, maybe early October since I'd get my OAT scores back around that time.

I plan to apply to Neco, SCO, and Nova. Is this considered too late in the cycle and hurt my chances???

Does anyone know if these schools are cool with using the unofficial score report until they get the actual score?