How difficult is Opt School?

[Optman87]

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Just out of curiosity how much more difficult is opt school than your undergraduate career?

Thanks for the info! 🙂

 

[CarltonBanks]

I don't have any personal experience (yet), but maybe some of these threads will help:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/search.php?searchid=4126027

 

[vsarge0708]

Optometry school is equivalent to having a fire hose at full blast aimed right at your open mouth--it's alot of material in a relatively short amount of time.

 

[eyestrain]

Meh. I didn't think it was that bad. I guess it's different for everyone.

 

[alferec]

Just out of curiosity how much more difficult is opt school than your undergraduate career?

Thanks for the info! 🙂

Optometry school is harder than undergrad during your in first year mostly because of volume, not so much in difficulty of content because lots of it is review from undergrad (e.g. anatomy, physio, biology/biochem, etc.). But then in second year...volume increases even more and content becomes significantly more difficult. But you just learn to deal with it and eventually you just get used to being so busy I guess it isn't THAT bad...it could definitely be worse.

 

[aDubs]

Its all relative. It mainly depends how well you can adapt. Alot of people would think that undergrad at university is harder than high school, but I found it about the same or maybe even a bit easier.

So I would advise to prepare for the worst, but maybe not expect the worst 🙂

 

[WoodyJI]

Optometry school is similar to other programs (e.g., med, dental, pharm, etc.) in that the difficulty lies initially not in understanding the material per se, but having the skills in place and motivation to process a great volume of material. Some other people in this thread have hit on this topic, but I'd like to expand on it a little. Take the study of pharmacology for example. I'm in my 2nd year at OSU, and while I don't think learning the mechanisms for the drugs we studied was hard, it did take a lot of study skills to organize all 300 of the drugs that we covered last quarter. I guess it depends on how you got your grades in undergrad. If you were able to get good grades without studying really hard, you'll find that that simply is not possible in optometry school. You need to have your "learning style" or whatever works for you figured out so that you can keep up.

I was one of those people with stellar OAT scores and not so stelar GPA, so if you're coming into optometry school like me, I'd recommend seriously researching how to learn before you start school. The last time I studied learning skills was in 8th grade, so taking a refresher course in that wasn't boring! If on the other hand, I actually had been someone accustomed to working around the clock to get good grades in undergrad, optometry school probably wouldn't have seemed significantly harder than undergrad...that's probably a better approach!

 

[alferec]

I forgot to also mention that an extremely important factor in what makes optometry school difficult is that you have to be very, VERY good at learning techniques and procedures in a relatively short amount of time. This includes subjective refraction (the phoroptor), retinoscopy, ophthalmoscopy (both direct and indirect), etc etc. There must be hundreds of techniques you have to learn for optometry school (this includes the general techniques plus vision therapy, contact lenses, extended ocular disease exams, oh man the list goes on)!!! You also have to be good at doing these techniques under stress i.e. with a professor breathing down your neck, watching your every move. This seems to be an often overlooked but yet very important aspect when considering if optometry is right for you.

 

[gochi]

Optometry school is similar to other programs (e.g., med, dental, pharm, etc.) in that the difficulty lies initially not in understanding the material per se, but having the skills in place and motivation to process a great volume of material. Some other people in this thread have hit on this topic, but I'd like to expand on it a little. Take the study of pharmacology for example. I'm in my 2nd year at OSU, and while I don't think learning the mechanisms for the drugs we studied was hard, it did take a lot of study skills to organize all 300 of the drugs that we covered last quarter. I guess it depends on how you got your grades in undergrad. If you were able to get good grades without studying really hard, you'll find that that simply is not possible in optometry school. You need to have your "learning style" or whatever works for you figured out so that you can keep up.

I was one of those people with stellar OAT scores and not so stelar GPA, so if you're coming into optometry school like me, I'd recommend seriously researching how to learn before you start school. The last time I studied learning skills was in 8th grade, so taking a refresher course in that wasn't boring! If on the other hand, I actually had been someone accustomed to working around the clock to get good grades in undergrad, optometry school probably wouldn't have seemed significantly harder than undergrad...that's probably a better approach!

About the drugs. Who's gonna spend all that time memorizing "stuff" about the drugs. Surely, they don't test you on all of it, right ?

 

[Jay12]

About the drugs. Who's gonna spend all that time memorizing "stuff" about the drugs. Surely, they don't test you on all of it, right ?

I would think they do.......why wouldn't they.....That's what sets apart professional school from undergrad...just the sheer abundance of information....Plus, can you imagine treating a patient knowing only half of the drugs?

 

[DrRobs]

I would think they do.......why wouldn't they.....That's what sets apart professional school from undergrad...just the sheer abundance of information....Plus, can you imagine treating a patient knowing only half of the drugs?

exactly, its professsional school for a reason and you shouldnt take any professional school light hearted-ly. If you want something easy, work at mcdonalds.

 

[Optman87]

Thanks for all the great information!

I really appreciate it

 

[WoodyJI]

I would think they do.......why wouldn't they.....That's what sets apart professional school from undergrad...just the sheer abundance of information....Plus, can you imagine treating a patient knowing only half of the drugs?

While it is true that they can't ask you questions about all of it at once, they do their best. The final exam for our pharm class was a thick 85 questions. It's not like you can only memorize the ones you think they'll ask about or may be important. You need to be able to handle all of them b/c the professor can and will ask about any of them--even the unpopular ones. For example: If you ever get the joy of taking pharmacology in professional school, you'll surely hear about furosemide--it's a classic loop diuretic, and there'll probably be a test question on it. However, the professor will also throw in a question about ethacrynic acid, a loop diuretic only mentioned once in a list with torsemide & bumetanide. The question will be given out of context, so you'll need to have a few different ways at getting to the right answer. You can't do this with pure intelligence (well, 99.9% of us can't), it can only be done with solid study skills/habits.

People often ask questions about how hard med school/opt school/dent school/podiatric 'medical' school/etc. are to try and see if one route is easier. What I hope that they find through these questions is that they're all just about the same level of difficulty. Take the pharmacology class for example again. It happened to be one of the handful of classes taught by an outside professor--not an optometrist. Colleges do this to maintain accreditation status. The professor was a PhD in pharmacology who won best professor for the college of medicine in '06. In this case, the course was almost identical to the one you'd get in med school. The professor, course packet, and test questions were for all intents and purposes identical. (I obviously didn't take both classes though, so I can't really ever be sure--so don't quote me too much on that.) Other classes/challenges in med school may be more difficult than optometry school, like gross anatomy. I imagine that's pretty hard. We did mostly head and neck anatomy, however, optometry school does have that heavy performance aspect. You'll frequently need to be able to demonstrate your skills in front of a professor judging you/grading you as you go a long, and often under a time constraint, as some other people have already mentioned. In med school, students do some performance stuff with standardized patients, etc. but I tend to think that we end up doing a little more in that area than they're required to do.

Every college is unique though. They're all hard, but sometimes you get lucky/unlucky. You can have faculty which will bend over backwards for the students at one med school and end up having that experience be "easier" than going to dental school with faculty which demands you learn it their way or the high way.

The answer is always choose something that is a good fit for you--because there's no easy path upwards.

 

[daysend85]

Optometry school is equivalent to having a fire hose at full blast aimed right at your open mouth--it's alot of material in a relatively short amount of time.

i agree with this 100%. opt school is significantly harder than what i expected and sometimes it seems un-doable. but i heard it gets a little easier after 1st year is out of the way.

 

[gochi]

exactly, its professsional school for a reason and you shouldnt take any professional school light hearted-ly. If you want something easy, work at mcdonalds.

That's such a cliche

Optometry school just seems more difficult than any professional school except for dentistry due to the instruments you must learn to use.

I got a question...do you have to be able to use all equipments/techniques for the NBEO or are there only certain ones ? Once you start working, will you primarily be using specific equipment, say 5/10 instruments you need to learn how to use during grad school ?

 

[Aznfarmerboi]

Optometry school is equivalent to having a fire hose at full blast aimed right at your open mouth--it's alot of material in a relatively short amount of time.

or its like holding a plastic cup under a waterfall trying to collect all that water which represents knowledge.