I have no idea about what I'm saying please rip me apart
The fact that you use salary.com is hilarious. Here's something a bit more accurate.
Optometrists and if you'd like data for Canada
here you go.
Even better, go ahead and find listings in any city of your choosing, go ahead and find out what the starting salaries are. The figures on salary.com are inflated because they take into account private practise holders who've been in the business for 20-30+ years. To any job, you'll find that 10+ optometrists have already applied to it because there aren't enough jobs to go around. IT IS A FACT THAT GRADUATES FROM THE PAST 4-5 YEARS HAVE HAD TO STRING TOGETHER PART TIME JOBS TO GET BY. Go ahead, try and find jobs that pay more than 80k/year as an optometrist that isn't running a well established practise. I bet you'll clench your cheeks and try to prove me wrong, you'll search up "optometrist job opening" and look at the first few links and then rejoice when you see a few postings saying that america's best, sams, lenscrafter, walmart etc. say that you can make 150k easily (reality is, most of these places can't even break 80-90k).
Every year 1,350 new optometrists graduate while 420 retire.
Let that sink in - that number is going to get even higher, believe me.
Baby boomers are retiring yes - but even with that factored in, even with the increasingly aging population - regardless of all that, studies have been done, there are simply way too many optometrists being added into the system year by year than can be made up by optometrists retiring. The opening of 5 new schools within the past few years with potentially more to come is completely nonsensical, even KHE will agree with me on that. I'm not going to do your homework for you but several labor forecast studies done not only by the government but by the AOA itself have stated explicitly that there is already an oversupply which is going to get even worse.
Here you go buddy I'll do your homework for ya.
http://abcmo.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Lewin-Study-Optometry-Surplus.pdf
It should be an alarmingly huge red flag for you when you realize that these new schools accept sub 3.0 gpa sub 300 oat scoring applicants en masse just to grab their 40k a year in tuition. Hell, even the 'good' schools like ICO, NECO, SUNY etc. all accept substandard scoring applicants who would automatically get rejected by other 4 year schools like med/dental/pharm.
Also, optometrist, specialize? I'm sorry what? Optometrists do not specialize at all, their specialties are really minor. A residency in optometry gets you nothing, it adds nothing to your skill set, it doesn't distinguish you at all except for the potential to work at a VA or as a lecturer (optometry school lecturers get paid 60k/year).
The only troll here is yourself, the fact that you're so uneducated and misguided and completely unaware of reality is honestly mind boggling, but then I'm reminded that humans have a tendency to lie to themselves and tell themselves oh it'll all be okay just to get by.
Go ahead, apply to optometry school, go through 4 years of schooling, 200k+ debt only to land 3 part time jobs paying a total of 80-90k. Don't tell me no one warned ya. There's plenty of people and threads on here throughout the years that convey the same message. Go ahead and make an account on odwire.org, here's a tip, don't apply as a pre-opt student, apply as an optometrist, you'll see that what I'm saying and trying to tell people about here is
t h e - e x a c t - s a m e - m e s s a g e
Good god you have a 3.0/2.9 gpa, you are going to be part of the problem.