What's up with the 2-year OD program at the New England College of Optometry? Can someone with a PhD in social psychology get an OD after two years of study? Here's the link: http://www.neco.edu/educational-programs/AODP_Program.aspx
im not an expert (hopefully someone with more knowledge will respond) but i think this is a program just to give you some credit for classes you may have taken at a graduate level. ie graduate biochem or phamacology. someone with say a phd in neuroscience will probably be exempted from neurosci classes. when they advertise "two years" that is probably the fastest you can get it (if you are from a background very similar to the OD first two years) if not , you will still need to make up the require classes. unless a your program consist of the necessary classes (sorry i dont know anything about a phd in psychology) then you will be required to make up the classes you dont have. and that could take from 2 to the full 4 years others like foreign ODs that are not accredited (or work in countires where ODs can only refract) can fasttrack thier studies by maybe skipping the refraction classes. for the rest of us, we will have to take it from scratch.
Only academic prerequisites seem to be a PhD and OAT. No specific courses are listed. Here is the application: http://www.neco.edu/pubs/admissions/AODP.Application.pdf
they will most likely look at course you have taken to see which ones matches up. i seriously doubt they will allow you to jump to clinic not taking any basic classes. i mean come on, if they threw you into the clinic right now, would you know what to do? i am sure that the courses need to be taken or somehow substituted, if not, NECO is really up to something fishy. of course the easiest way to find out is to contact neco directly!
I'm a second-year medical student. Not interested in optometry at all. Found out about this 2-year OD program a while ago and wanted to get some clarification.
We have a faculty member who has a PhD in anatomy and then did the NECO program and got her OD in the 2 year program. She said it was a lot in independent work.
