New Here - Help

[wut2dowifmylife]

Hi everyone,

I was just reading over the thread where everyone posted the good news of getting into optometry schools.

I am new here, and have been researching about optometry as a profession for sometime now.

It is my dream to get in, HOWEVER my cumulative GPA is crap!! (not because I am intellectullay challenged, but due to familial circumstances). The good news is that my cumulative GPA for my last two years is 3.56 but my overall is below a 2.5 .

Do you guys know of any school who takes special circumstances into consideration or looks at the last 2 yrs? and do you guys know of anyone who get in with a 2.5 or below?

THANK YOU SO MUCH

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[PLPrincess]

Hi everyone,

I was just reading over the thread where everyone posted the good news of getting into optometry schools.

I am new here, and have been researching about optometry as a profession for sometime now.

It is my dream to get in, HOWEVER my cumulative GPA is crap!! (not because I am intellectullay challenged, but due to familial circumstances). The good news is that my cumulative GPA for my last two years is 3.56 but my overall is below a 2.5 .

Do you guys know of any school who takes special circumstances into consideration or looks at the last 2 yrs? and do you guys know of anyone who get in with a 2.5 or below?

THANK YOU SO MUCH

I think your pre-requisite GPA will be more important than your overal. Any idea what that is? The fact that you showed such drastic improvement will also be good and I'm sure that most schools realize that life happens, as long as you tell them what your case was, I think they'll understand.

Where/when are you planning on applying? Did you take the OAT? Any experience in the field?

 

[mystro]

I'm confused

You said cumulative, and overall. Aren't they both the SAME?

How is your pre-req avg?

To tell you the truth, i'm 3rd yr, and my avg. pre-req average sucks big time, since I took 85% of them in my first year, and the 15% in my 2nd year.

Did you get below 2.5 on your pre-reqs? Was their a good reason? Like a problem etc...


I'm scared too

But its good that your last 2 yrs is REALLY GOOD. They will look at your improvement !!

Good luck! And remember to do good on the OAT

 

[wut2dowifmylife]

Cumulative and overall average are the same you are right

but I said, overall for my last two yrs. since I took all my pre-reqs in my first yr, I have like 2.0 in them


as far as experience goes, I have worked with optometrists for the past yr.

you know, life does happen your right, but it pains me to think 'there goes my future' because of some unfortunate incidents that has happened in my life.


I truly hope, they take my situation into consideration - I need ONE school to believe in me, and give me a chance.

I will hopefully kill the OATs just to add to my credibility. ANY MORE IDEAS ANYONE??

thanks a lot.

 

[EyeDr2008]

If you went back and took some of your prereqs agian I think it would definitely help. I don't think you would have to re-take all of them, just the ones you did the worst in. I think if you do that and then do really well on the OAT (like at least a 330) you could have a good chance.

 

[bigred]

I would study really hard for the OAT. My advice would be to take the Kaplan course and do everything in the lesson plan. Letters of recommedation and inteviews are also pretty important so be sure to optimize those parts of your application. Then I would apply early to every school that has a big class. I was talking to a prehealth advisor today and he was saying how NOVA accepts students with below a 3.0 and below a 300 OAT.

 

[hoosier1]

You may consider enrolling in some upper division science courses. Try acing the classes, which will in turn increase your prereq. GPA. You should also stick to the position you have at the optometry office. Also, mentioning the traumatic experience as an undergrad is an important factor in your application... so you should maybe mention it in your essay, good luck.

 

[dimps]

Hey, hows it going? I'm in the EXACT same situation as you in terms of GPA....i took the OAT once and got a 330...but im gonna take it one more time and try to score around 350..lets see what happends...i applied to UHCO, NOVA, SCO, ICO, NEWENCO, PCO...already got rejected from ICO..so i'm waiting to hear from the rest...i have my fingers crossed...I dont know how the schools react towards low GPA's...let me know if you hear about any special circumstances...goodluck!!