Lesson 19: The Optometry School Application Process
Congratulations. You’ve decided to embark on probably one of the most expensive, time-consuming journeys of your life. The Optometry Admissions Test (OAT) and/or GRE, the personal statement, supporting materials, the supplemental essays, and the Interview add together to what can often be a headache. Despite this, somehow, over 7,000 people enroll in Doctor of Optometry (OD) programs every year. This guide offers resources and approaches to help you maximize your chances that you’re one of the 7,000.
This guide helps you conceptualize the overall application while encouraging you to consider how each detail contributes to this conception. To grasp it in all its complexity, we encourage you to think about the application as a whole. While this guide focuses on each application component, it will also push you to think about how each component complements the other. No part of the application acts independently. As you build a personal narrative, each section builds upon the previous.
An admissions officer will read each section in relation to the others with two questions in mind. First, is this person qualified? And second, does this person truly want to become an optometrist? Everything you write should be in the service of assuring the reader these things. In the process of writing, you may encounter self-doubt and insecurity. As with any life-altering decision, these misgivings are healthy and normal, so long as your enthusiasm outweighs your doubts most of the time.
In order to focus on the details, however, requires a clear understanding of what the application looks like. This understanding allows you to craft your application to respond to the two major questions guiding your evaluation.
The application is a lengthy process and shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s for people who truly want to be optometrists, who have thought about this for years, who have made sure to seek experiences that confirm their desires. This guide will complement the long, hard work of deciding to become an optometrist. It will not replace the hours of contemplation and experiences you should undertake before considering applying. You must have already completed the required coursework in undergraduate and performed shadowing hours with an optometrist. (Most schools recommend around 40 hours at the minimum.)
However, to be competitive, you must have a compelling narrative that ties these interests and experiences together.
The OptomCAS
The Association of Schools of Optometry administers the Optometry Centralized Application Service (OptomCAS). Similar to the Common Application for undergraduate admission, the OptomCAS allows you to apply to multiple programs with a single application. This centralized application consists of:
Personal Information/Academic History: This section contains basic academic information (OAT/GRE scores, transcripts, demographic information) that you don’t have much flexibility in crafting. This guide doesn’t cover this component of the application.
Supporting Information: This is the area you have the most flexibility in crafting. This section contains your letters of recommendation (or references), observation hours verification, experiences, achievements, and essay.
Supplemental Information: Some schools have additional requirements including shorter essays.
After reviewing your application, schools will begin requesting interviews around December, where you’ll have to fly out (or, perhaps even post-COVID, Zoom into) a school where members of the Admissions Committee will interview you. If you’re personable and make an impression, you’ll then be accepted to the school, where you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education to take on the burden of caring for people and saving the world.
This application form is similar to that of undergraduate admissions. The application differs, however, in what admissions officers seek. Because an undergraduate degree is a prerequisite for OD programs, it’s easy to think about the process in terms of the applications you wrote five or more years ago. Because of the large number of high schoolers applying to four-year colleges and universities, a huge industry has emerged around gatekeeping these institutions. From the large admissions offices to the test-prep and admissions consulting programs, the audiences of undergraduate applications are slightly different from that of optometry school applications.
Undergraduate admissions offices are large, complex operations. From marketing schools to providing tours to organizing daily info sessions, the undergraduate admissions office can be likened to an industrial operation. In any successful industrial operation, individuals from all knowledge bases and disciplines come together to provide valuable input on the process to “sell” more applications. (Then, they make more money on application fees while simultaneously making the school appear more competitive and ultimately increasing its rankings.)
Despite declining enrollment in the humanistic disciplines, undergraduate admissions committees are often disproportionately comprised of members from the humanities, meaning essays must be perfect—no comma splices, misspelled words, or banal metaphors. Given the immense competition, small errors are great reasons for undergraduate admissions counselors to disqualify you from the process. In undergraduate admissions, while strong content is crucial, form is too.
In slight contrast, the optometry school admissions office is staffed mostly by practicing optometrists and OD students. The people whose main day-to-day writing activities include recording astigmatism correction values or scrawling eye dilation prescriptions using pre-formulated medical shorthand are the same ones reading your application. While many of these people come with undergraduate majors as varied as art history or anthropology, many are far removed from those days.
Consequently, the form of the essays will not be scrutinized as deeply as an undergraduate admissions application. The ambitious creative risks employed by overachieving prospective undergraduates—the essay about napkins in haiku form, the rap about the 1054 supernova observed by Chinese astronomers—are not going to necessarily shift the needle in the way they would for an undergraduate application.
Rather, vivid personal descriptions that highlight your motivations to become an optometrist will have a much greater influence on essays' effectiveness. Concise, cogent writing is key. What are the experiences that made you want to become an optometrist? How did those experiences do that? Even the most boring moment can be the grounds for a good story, when told right.
This guide predominantly covers parts of the application where you have significant agency to craft during the application process. For other parts of the OptomCAS Application, like standardized testing and interview prep, see the resources below.
GRE/OAT Prep
https://www.ada.org/en/oat/test-preparation
https://www.kaptest.com/study/gre/
https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/
Interview Prep
