Waterloo

[Lila V]

Hey there,
I just had a couple of questions regarding the University of Waterloo school of Optometry. There are a lot of negative comments about the school on the forum, but I was wondering if someone who went to the school could comment on the program, profs, and quality of the school. I would like to stay in Canada, and I have a 4.5 G.P.A and a T.S score of 400, A.A score of 380. I think I'm competitive for the school, but is the school up to the same standards of the American universities? I am worried about the amount of clinical time given to the students as well, being as clinical is not started until third year. Thanks!

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[jefguth]

You're competitive, great scores on the OAT!

In reality, you're not going to get much clinical experience at any of the schools, to my knowledge, before third year other than at PCO. Feel free to correct me everyone. However, the criticism I hear about UW's clinical program is that b/c the on campus clinic doesn't seem to see many patients, third year clinicians double up and work with patients as a pair.

 

[JAZZEYE]

PCO's optometric curriculum begins clinical skill training and patient care orientation from day one. Patient care skills are complemented by a carefully integrated sequence of basic and clinical sciences. This allows immediate application of knowledge into practice. Students are immediately immersed into communication, history-taking and interpersonal skills. The foundational clinical skills are presented throughout the first year and are accompanied by a variety of standardized and community-based clinical experiences.

The early introduction of clinical skills permits a continuous and expanding array of patient care experiences both on and off campus. Throughout the first two years, students participate in escalating levels of patient care delivery, evolving from an assisting role in community screenings and primary care examinations, to expanded responsibility for comprehensive patient care. By the middle of the second year, students are integrated into the College's Eye Institute as full participants in the service delivery system.

 

[tybuff]

If waterloo was so bad with clinical experience - we'd all be blind up here.

all joking aside...

waterloo is a wonderful school and you'll find me bitching about it at times, but i'd much rather be there than anywhere else in the world, so take what I say witha grain of salt. Yes, clinical experience isn't as great as PCO, but I'm also $7k cdn in debt vs $40k+ us. is that experience worth $33k+? in my opinion, no; you will be doing this for the rest of your life, and waterloo graduates its students with the tools and experience necessary for any optometrist to be successful; a year here wont make or break a good optometrist (once again, my opinion)

and with scores/GPA like that, you're in.

 

[qwopty99]

Hey there,
I just had a couple of questions regarding the University of Waterloo school of Optometry. There are a lot of negative comments about the school on the forum, but I was wondering if someone who went to the school could comment on the program, profs, and quality of the school. I would like to stay in Canada, and I have a 4.5 G.P.A and a T.S score of 400, A.A score of 380. I think I'm competitive for the school, but is the school up to the same standards of the American universities? I am worried about the amount of clinical time given to the students as well, being as clinical is not started until third year. Thanks!

u ask good questions. when it comes down to it though, in all honesty, the clinical experience at UW probably isn't up to par with the "average" US school (this is coming on merely my perception of the avg. clinical US OD school experience). without going into too much detail, this is due to a number of factors including:
1. a clinic housed in a university town. u just don't get that much pathology/patient encounters.
2. the clinic is in a non-prescribing jurisdiction. this has the double-effect of exacerbating point 1 (above), as well as giving u like no skills in prescribing meds.

the way the above is dealt with is in 4th year, u do one term (works out to about 3 months and 1 week) somewhere else - usually in the US in an OD clinic in a TPA jurisdiction. this is basically where u learn ALL your pathology. is this enough? it really depends on where u go - although no matter what, it will likely be more enough for u to return to say, Toronto (non-TPA jurisdiction, metropolitan area), if that's what u plan to do.

all that said, an education at Waterloo is more than enough for you to practice in Canada. Why? because the UW OD education is the gold-standard in canada. suppose UW grads really are weaker in pathology than US grads, it's not something that really "matters" per se if u practice in canada since the standard u will have to practice at is determined by your peers. and again, all this "assumes" u are going to be poor at pathology - which really is a big assumption. u could probably be crap at pathology even coming out of PCO if u don't apply yourself.

bottom line: the UW OD degree is more than enough for u to practice optometry competently in canada.

 

[Lila V]

Thanks guys for all your input, I guess it comes down to what is right for me more than anything, right? And in response to Fonzie Fonz, some schools in Canada work on a 4.5 g.p.a as opposed to a 4.0, it just sets apart A's from A+'s, but not all school's do... so it is possible.

 

[prettygreeneyes]

Check out the Optometry School Ambassadors thread... Waterloo is one of the schools with an ambassador already signed up!

Ambassadors thread is here!