I will do my best to answer this here. I think however it's safe to say that the mentor forum for optometry is pretty much dead. Students and potential students looking for the mentors should PM them if they wish to ask privately or simply make public postings in either the pre-optometry or optometry forums. Because the mentor forum is dead, I rarely check in there and the following question is about 2 weeks old. I just realized it was there. My apoligies to the poster for the delay.
1) If I was on the admission committe (I am NOT), I would look for candidates that had a decent understanding of what optometry is and what optometrists do. I would try to weed out anyone who was doing optometry because they thought they couldn't get into medical school and optometry was "good enough." I would also look for someone who has a geniune sense of scientific curiosity. Many people enter health careers because they are lucrative and they want to "help people." That's not enough. Being a good clinician involves having a strong background in the scientific method and a good amount of scientific curiosity.
2) I would not apply to the new schools. I would wait at least 5 years. This is just a personal opinion. Any undertaking like that will invariably have a number of bugs to work out and there is little point in you being in the class that has to go through the bug filled program.
3) The term specialist in optometry is often times vague. Sometimes it refers to someone who is residency trained. Sometimes it refers to someone who has attained FAAO status in their specialty. (http://www.aaopt.org/)
Sometimes people who have an interest in a certain area and get a good reputation for being particularly proficient in a certain area of practice start to get referred to as specialists either by themselves or their collegues in the area. Different state boards have different requirements as to who, if anyone can use the term specialist so it's always to check with the state board on that issue.
I hope that helps.
Mentor Thread said:
1) If I was on the admission committe (I am NOT), I would look for candidates that had a decent understanding of what optometry is and what optometrists do. I would try to weed out anyone who was doing optometry because they thought they couldn't get into medical school and optometry was "good enough." I would also look for someone who has a geniune sense of scientific curiosity. Many people enter health careers because they are lucrative and they want to "help people." That's not enough. Being a good clinician involves having a strong background in the scientific method and a good amount of scientific curiosity.
2) I would not apply to the new schools. I would wait at least 5 years. This is just a personal opinion. Any undertaking like that will invariably have a number of bugs to work out and there is little point in you being in the class that has to go through the bug filled program.
3) The term specialist in optometry is often times vague. Sometimes it refers to someone who is residency trained. Sometimes it refers to someone who has attained FAAO status in their specialty. (http://www.aaopt.org/)
Sometimes people who have an interest in a certain area and get a good reputation for being particularly proficient in a certain area of practice start to get referred to as specialists either by themselves or their collegues in the area. Different state boards have different requirements as to who, if anyone can use the term specialist so it's always to check with the state board on that issue.
I hope that helps.
