business course content in opt school?

[r_salis]

What types of business classes are in the optometry school curriculum? What kind of topics do you learn?

Just curious...

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[TPMOH]

OSU has about 3 Practice Management courses in the curriculum, and a voluntary mentoring program in which you can sign up and meet with graduate students in the college of business. I decided not to get involved with the mentoring program since my undergrad was a double major in accounting and economics and I've worked in a bank for over 4 years. I think that it would be of help to those who have little or no business background.

 

[r_salis]

TPMOH -- wow, from accounting/finance to optometry -- that's quite a change! How did you decide to go into optometry?

I'm considering taking some econ classes next semester -- if I had to take only one or two, what do you think would help me most?

 

[TPMOH]

Optometry was something that I considered going into from the time I was 18 and started college, but at the time, I lacked the maturity and discipline to stick it out. I changed my major continuously, and decided to go into accounting because my uncle is a CPA and thought maybe I'd like it. It was ok, but my true interests lie with the sciences and optometry. So, after I got my accounting and economics business degree, I took a couple more prereqs for optometry school and took the OAT and worked at a temp job with Bank One. After I didn't get accepted the 1st time at OSU , I was offered a perm position at the bank as a corporate trust administrator.

If you are considering taking a business class or two as a free elective, I would recommend taking an intro to financial accounting class and/or a personal finance class. The accounting class will probably be a little harder and more work, but I think it will be very beneficial for any prospective optometrist to have some accounting background especially if you end up going into private practice. The class will give you a good understanding of debits and credits, the balance sheet, income statement, and so forth so you will have some understanding what is going on when you get involved with your own bookkeeping. The personal finance class would also be beneficial in topics like debt management, time value of money, and so forth. Taking an economics course to meet a social science prereq for your undergrad degree would be fine, but I don't think you'll learn anything useful that will help you as an optometrist.

 

[r_salis]

Your financial experiences will be a huge plus if you decide to run your own practice when you graduate, that's really cool. It's also great to have experience in another field altogether to give you a little perspective on everything.

Thanks for your advice about taking a financial accounting class, I think that's what I'm going to take next semester. There's a good "intro for non-majors" class that looks like a good background.