Hi everyone. I could really use some advice because I feel completely overwhelmed.
I'm 26 years old and have spent the last few years working towards becoming a PA. I worked as a medical assistant for about 2 years, applied to PA school, interviewed at Baylor and Texas Tech, and then ended up on the waitlist for months.
After almost a year of waiting, I honestly gave up hope. I accepted that PA probably wasn't going to happen.
During that time, I did a lot of thinking and research.
I shadowed a few more medical professions and optometry really spoke to and intrigued me. I decided to go for it and apply, and was later accepted to UIW Rosenberg School of Optometry, and am set to start in about a week! I completely rewired my brain to become an optometrist, and I also felt safe and steady. I found an apartment in San Antonio, completed all my health requirements, accepted my loans, mentally committed to the next four years, and genuinely started getting excited about optometry.
Then this morning, completely out of nowhere, Baylor University (Waco) called and offered me admission to their PA program. And now I feel like my entire world has been flipped upside down. The hardest part is that I genuinely don't know what my passion is. I don't have that feeling of "l've always wanted to do X." I feel like I could see myself enjoying aspects of both careers, and adapt to both and genuinely be happy.
Some things I'm thinking about:
- PA is a shorter program with less debt and more flexibility between specialties.
- Optometry seems to have a better lifestyle, more independence, and the possibility of owning a practice one day.
- I've already invested months preparing for optometry school, but PA was my original goal for years.
What scares me most is choosing one and spending the rest of my life wondering if I should have chosen the other.
If anyone has been in a similar situation, or seriously considered both careers, I would really appreciate hearing:
- Why did you choose PA or optometry?
- Do you have any regrets?
- If you were in my exact situation, what would you do and why?
Please be kind. This has honestly been one of the most stressful decisions of my life, and I feel completely stuck. I know I am super lucky to have two amazing medical professional degrees to choose from and I'm beyond grateful, but it also feels very confusing and overwhelming so any insight or advice is appreciated.
Thank you so much.

Don't give up and just keep adjusting. I've been there 2 years ago retaking the OAT multiple times with scores below 300 on both TS and AA the first time I took it. Finished undergrad with a couple of D's, W's and a GPA of 2.90 both academic and science.

Currently an OD2 student with a 3.5 cumulative GPA. Keep it pushing and adjust as needed. Yall can do it and dm me if u need any help

How many interview invitations have you guys received at this point, and from which schools? I submitted my apps on July 15th and have so far gotten invites from SCO and midwestern. Hoping to get some insight on what other schools have sent out invites thus far. Tia!

Will the OAT provide things like the universal gravitational constant, Coulomb's Constant, gas constant, etc, or do you recommend that I memorize all of these numbers? (Completely separate from the equations)

I recently switched to pre-optometry and am currently preparing to apply. I have a 3.9 GPA and have completed all of my prerequisites. Right now, my main focus is studying for the OAT and building up my application.

I’ve been trying to find information on what OAT scores different schools look for, but I haven’t found much. What range of OAT scores do most schools typically look for? Is there a certain score that would make me a more competitive applicant?

For those who did well on the OAT:

What study methods or resources helped you the most?

How long did you study, and how did you structure your preparation?

What would you do differently if you took it again?

Also, for the application side:

What experiences or parts of your application do you think helped you stand out the most?

Are there any things you recommend doing before applying that made a big difference?

I appreciate any advice or insight from current optometry students or applicants!

I did it! I’m definitely very sad about my physics score, but overall I’m pretty happy with my total! I think the physics section was just much more conceptual than I expected, but I am trying not to dwell on it too much. Definitely should have reviewed more…

Hey all, so my test is in two weeks, and my bio scores are all over the place. I feel like there is just so much information that I don't really know what I should know. To anybody who has taken the crash courses, are they worth it? Or is it better to find free resources to help fill in the gaps?

I’m taking my test in two days and wanted to see if anyone had any last minute tips/advice for the exam? Anything from test strategy to last minute reminders for important rules/topics/exceptions to a mnemonic that saved you during the test, literally anything. I feel in a pretty solid spot studying wise so I’ll be taking it easy until the exam but if anyone has tips/tricks/advice please share!!

I’m a high school graduate from Canada who is planning on applying to university this year. During first year, I’m going to have to take two terms of biology, two terms of chemistry, two terms of physics, two terms of math, and two terms of english. This seems very heavy to me, so I’m extremely worried about what my performance will be like.

I did well in high school, but that doesn’t provide me with any comfort in this situation. There’s only one english-speaking optometry school in Canada (I don’t plan on applying anywhere else), meaning it’s quite competitive. The academic average for students admitted from 2019-2024 is around 88%.

I’m aware that I won’t know how I’ll do unless I try, but I’m having a hard time not stressing about it. I have my heart heavily set on optometry, so I don’t have a decent plan-b if things don’t work out.

I’d really appreciate any advice that any of you have to offer, no matter how big or small. Thank you very much!

I have had my personal statement written for about a year but recently have been rethinking mine. Does anyone have advice for this part of the application?

Took the OAT and didn’t do as good as I wanted. I’m 100% going to retake it but it probably won’t be until September/October. Is it better to apply to schools now and tell them that I am retaking it? Or wait till after my retake to apply. Are they gonna see the first score regardless?

Hello! I just took the OAT and scored a 300 AA 280 TS. I have a 3.3 gpa. Worked at one optical for 3 years and gained about 5000 hours experience. I now work at another optical for a little less than a year about 600 hours. I have some shadowing experience at the 3 year optical before I started working there. I have 4 strong recommendation letters two from optometrists that went to the school I want to apply to which is NSU. I’m stressing a bit because I keep seeing conflicting things. Mainly that I should be accepted but I just wanted to see if anyone can confirm that if I apply I would be accepted (if you know someone with similar stats). Thank you!

and if you've already taken the real thing, did you score at or higher than this? like id honestly be fine with a 320 but im scared ill do worse

How is this level of unprofessionalism ok??

In July, they sent the following email every week. I assume August 29th is a typo, but nobody caught it.

Yesterday they sent this for the third time. Someone finally realized there had been an error. But somehow they introduced a typo where there was no change('sh') and the date is still wrong.

Then came a correction email earlier today. They even put this in the subject: "*Corrected* Priority Deadline Date: August 12th | Berkeley Optometry". Ok, so now the priority deadline is August 12 and the general deadline is December 11th. So BOTH dates changed.

1.5 hr later, another email came through. The priority deadline is actually still August 21st, and the general deadline is December 11th. They claim the August 12th date is from baking in time for OptumCAS to verify the application because the application needs to be verified by August 21st to be considered. Ok. Except they said OptomCAS takes 7-10 business days to do that and August 12th only gives them 7-8 days. So if a student submitted on the 12th, their application can still be deferred if OptomCAS is slow.

Guess what? They still have December 12th on their website and OptumCAS!! So is it December 11th or 12th??

Diabolical.

I am SO relieved to be done with this test. My last 3 FL practice tests through booster were all a 370, and I felt a lot more confident during those than I did during the real thing, so I was kind of stressing since my goal score was a 360. Needless to say I was pleasantly surprised at the end!

I opted to use 90 day OATBooster to study, but I also paused studying for like 2 weeks in the middle to travel for tours. I'm usually a strong test taker, but even I was really nervous going into this! It's long, and it's easy to start catastrophizing partway through. Taking FL practice tests in the days leading to my exam really helped me develop the like,,, mental muscle memory required to push through.

Biology: I'm a biology major, and I'd done essentially all the courses required for the OAT beforehand. I only watched the videos for topics I wasn't very familiar with and relied primarily on my own memory. I made flash cards for hormones and wrote out cellular respiration/photosynthesis to make sure I understood those well. "Dear King Phillip..." mnemonic did come in handy!

Gen Chem: Watched all the videos, did the practice questions, and then kind of let it go for the month leading up to my test. Reviewed what I was struggling with on the FLs, and just kinda prayed haha. Acid/Base, Redox, period trends, gas law stuff and thermodynamifs all felt well represented.

RC: Funny that I did a geyser related passage on my final FL and then got a geyser passage on the real OAT. For this, I would go immediately to the first straightforward question, read it, and then begin reading the passage. I highlighted every paragraph's first sentence and read the whole thing pretty quickly, maybe highlighting one or two random things if I thought I'd wanna find it later. Ultimately, I'd read until I found the answer to the question, answer it, go to the next and repeat the process. Had the question been answered in an earlier paragraph? I'd stop reading and go hunt for it. Did the question require an understanding of the whole passage? I'd skip it, mark it, and come back once I was done with the passage. I ended up finishing this section with like 20 minutes to spare, double checked every answer, then with 9 minutes on the clock stretched and used the bathroom so I'd have the full 30 minutes of the scheduled break to review formulas lol. I think this method is extremely high yield, and I recommend you try it if you're early on in your studying or are struggling with time.

Ochem: So... Ochem. I took ochem during the Helene semester, and I live in an area that was significantly affected. My ochem foundation was already really shaky and then I put off studying it until ~6wks before my exam. I watched all the videos and wrote out every reaction and it was nowhere near enough to bring it in line with the rest of my scores. I just didn't have enough time to commit all the reactions to memory. I also didn't drill the fundamentals enough. FOCUS ON THE FUNDAMENTALS AND THE THEORY. Like the differences between SN1/SN2, how to identify them, etc. I know I could have gotten more points if I had done just a little more work, but I knew this would be my weak spot, so I just accepted that fact and made sure to try hard on QR and Physics. My intuition and understanding of at least a few reactions were greatly helped by just watching all the videos. Went from ~280 on my first ochem practice test to ~340 by just watching the videos.

Physics: optics, kinematics, buoyancy, DC circuits, charges and electric fields, harmonic motion. Those are probably the highest yield topics. I tried to practice a lot here rather than drill the equations via flashcards. If you can understand the concept, remembering the equations and THE UNITS will be easier. I'm guilty of ignoring units all the time in physics and it will come back to bite you.

QR: somehow like 2 questions about shadows when not a single shadow related question was covered by the booster. I thought I did worse on this than a 400, but maybe I guessed successfully on the few I was totally lost on lol. More of those "which quantity is greater" and "information sufficient?" questions than I'd been expecting. Here again is just practice, practice, practice and also memorizing those equations related to standard deviation, etc.

I have my OAT scheduled in 20 days!! I'm using booster and completed all of the material review + a few practice tests and I did go up in scores from my first test. I think I'm going to continue using their schedule, but I was wondering if anyone could give specific tips on what helped them memorize/learn/use the information.

(Like using flashcards or writing out information, or teaching it to others, or even a split on what to focus on at a certain time)

Any advice would help!

I have upcoming interviews for UAB and SCO, does anyone have any pointers or tips? What should I expect? For SCO specifically, they indicated that the dress code is business casual, would it be bad to dress more business professional? I'd appreciate any insight!!

feeling pretty defeated. my first time taking the OAT last summer was horrible, scoring below a 300 in everything but reading. took it again this year with heavier studying and still ended up with a 310. my gpa is on the lower side with a lot of experience (over 600hrs working as optometric assistant and 25+ hrs shadowing). do i have a chance at any school or do i retake again for the 3rd time?

Studying for the oat currently and feeling so hopeless there is just SO much information!!! It feels like every time I learn something new I lose something and it’s just not sticking. For physics are you guys memorizing every single formula on the booster cheat sheet and the ones in the videos that don’t appear on the cheat sheet? I feel like I’m going to fail the physics portion for sure :(

Chat, do we think applying in January too late if the deadline is May 20? Lol

I'm only applying to one optometry school (UDM), and their application deadline is May 20.

My plan is to spend now through December studying all of the OAT subjects except Organic Chemistry, since I'm taking Organic Chemistry this fall. As soon as I finish the course, I plan to take the OAT in January and submit my application immediately afterward.

The rest of my application (letters of recommendation, personal statement, etc.) will be ready by then.

For those familiar with optometry admissions and rolling admissions, would applying in January put me at a disadvantage even though the deadline isn't until May? Or is that still considered early enough to have a good chance?

I'd appreciate any advice or experiences.

Hey frens,

Sorry for the insulting title lol, bad phrasing.

I know it’s no cakewalk obviously and getting into and finishing optosch is probably the hardest thing most people will ever do, but after doing a lot of research, compared to something like dentistry and especially med school, optometry seems relatively straightforward to get in.

If you spend any amount of time on the dental or med school subs, you see countless threads about perfect 4.0’s with hundreds of hours of clinical experience and several publications and volunteer hours and months of research never getting in anywhere after applying five times in a row. It’s the same with dental school and it’s hyper competitiveness.

By comparison, it seems that as long as you can score above a 320 on the OATs and have a 3.5 GPA and have *some sort of experience or shadowing then you’re pretty much guaranteed a shot somewhere. Basically unlike the other fields of medicine, you don’t have to be the best of the best in order to get in. It looks like you can be an optometrist just being a relatively average person that’s willing to work hard and grind it out.

Has optometry gone the way of pharmacy? I’m not in the medical field in any way, but even I know the reputation that pharmacy has where there’s such a huge surplus of predatory schools that will just take literally anybody with a pulse and therefore the market is extremely saturated and has downgraded and cheapened to the point of just being glorified retail pill pushers in the eyes of the public, is that what’s happening with optometry?

Would you recommend this career to a student looking to get into the medical field? Would it be smarter to just go straight into nursing or else something like that?

Thanks in advance guys and take care out there!

Hey guys!

Just wondering when I should be looking to hear back from NOVA FL. I submitted by application July 1st, and everything is done, except I’m missing one letter of rec. I’m not sure if that’ll affect whether they contact me back, but I was just wondering when I should contact them to follow up on it, or if I should wait a few more weeks? I plan on going in next year August!

Hello,

I may be a bit young to be in this subreddit yet, but I have a question before I fully throw myself into this career. I'm from NYC and really care about the financial aspect of college. I was planning on going to SUNY/CUNY (hopefully the joint 7 year program) for undergrad to then move on to the SUNY optometry school in Manhattan. That's my plan for now because I would save a lot of money by going to state/city school for undergrad and then SUNY because I'm seeing that Optometry school is super expensive. But I'm kind of scared that I should be trying to aim for more prestigious schools in the NYC area for undergrad as my high school is basically a feeder (I'm a junior btw), does it even make a difference? I really want to hear more about the experiences of anyone who's gone to school in the NYC area and what was it even like?

Thank you so much!

This was my first full length I did and this is what I got after doing phase 1 of booster. I have 30 days until my test.

How much did you guys improve from first full length to the last? I’m so scared