Oh I'm declining UIW. I think I will end up picking between UHCO, SUNY, and NECO.
That'll be a tough call between those 3. There aren't any official rankings, and every region seems to have different thoughts about the top schools. In the midwest, it's all about SCO and everyone I talked to says that is the Harvard of optometry schools. In the west, it's all about Berkeley. In the south and central US, it's all about UHCO. So I imagine in the NE, it's somewhere between SUNY and NECO! There isn't a clear consensus, and I think that's because each school has it's own unique attributes that are valuable to people in different ways. All three are great options: they will all give you a great education and you will have just as easy of a time finding a job with a diploma from each of those. SUNY is by far the toughest in terms of entering stats (rather, they have the highest average of the three). I've heard UHCO students study the most though, so the academic program is pretty rigorous (at least that's how they feel when they go to conferences and talk to students from other schools and hear about how much they study).
In your shoes, I would probably narrow it down to SUNY and UHCO. I've heard excellent things about NECO's clinical program, but I don't think it's going to be more outstanding than Houston's, so not worth the extra tuition dollars. UHCO's new facilities will open soon and provide some phenomenal clinical experiences that you can't get elsewhere. They also have a really wide variety of cases in the clinic (by comparison, I've had students from IUSO tell me all they see are myopic eyes with astigmatism, and their disease section of the clinic is kind of a joke since so many of the patients are young students). I think it's really important to know that you will have that diverse exposure. I imagine you'd get that at NECO too...but again...not necessarily worth the money unless you are just dying to move to that region.
Are there any specialties that stand out to you? Maybe talking to the schools about what their programs have to offer in that area will help too. Talking to people is what made me cancel my interview at Indiana, since eye disease was a really important piece of what I want in my clinical experience.
Are you interested in learning Spanish? The patient base at Houston has a large proportion that are Spanish-speaking, so that would provide a great opportunity. On the other hand, if that doesn't interest you or stresses you out, then maybe NECO would be the better clinical experience.
Other important questions...when are your first patient exposures? What is the nature of those exposures (are they just vision screenings or is it an exam?)? When are you beginning to work independently with patients? When do you start practicing with the clinical equipment? What type of preparation is there for opening a practice? Who is teaching those courses (people who have opened highly successful practices?)? Will you be able to attend optometric meetings in the state where you want to eventually practice? Is it a school that is actively trying to push the boundaries of the scope of optometry? What is the external rotations experience like? How many externships do you do? How flexible are the options in terms of where you can go? Is it one where you just blindly pick sites without knowing what type of experiences you will have or is there a history of feedback from students who have rotated through there in the past in order to have an idea about how actively you will get to participate? What is student life like and does that mesh well with your personality and expectations? What are the living options in the are and is that something you like and can afford? Is the student body close and collaborative or competitive with one another?
I don't know enough to comment on specifics at SUNY - only that I've heard great things and they put out a lot of great research and publications. Even if you aren't interested in research, being on campus near all of that going on will really benefit you in having more experience in emerging knowledge in the field.
Here's a document with entering stats for the various schools:
http://www.opted.org/files/public/Profile of the Entering Class 2010FINALpdf.pdf
