Hey there! No you do not need to be fluent, you'll be taught Spanish in your first year. All classes are in English. Since PR is still a part of the United States, your license will be valid everywhere, but you will have to make different boards for a few states because they require their own.
Heres the honest to God truth from an OD who graduated more than 2 yrs ago from IAUPR. If you can get into another school, GO THERE! now the island itself has some of the most amazing beaches ever and great food but the school and the surrounding environment is not beautiful and hand up to god you will be teaching yourself and that is not what you want when you are becoming a Dr. You may learn Spanish but only because English is so poor. Exams are poorly written and in terrible English. Professors are sensitive and blame you when you point out that something is not proper English. The school is currently under review by the ACOE for terribly low board pass rates and unfortunately for favoritism towards Puerto Rican students( literally calling the police to visit students who badmouthed native students ) There is a large cheating culture in the school and admin knows all about it. the part 1 pass rates (first time taking) are somewhere between 10-20% and about 95% of students take some or all parts of boards 3 or more times to pass (part 1 has the lowest pass rate of all optometry schools). At least 5-7 students are dismissed after first yr EVERY YEAR and then another 10-12 are held back another year. 15-20 students fail optics, pharm, anatomy and systemic first yr (it happens EVERY single year and still occurs) They make an extra 7-10,000 bonus for teaching in the summer. the Spanish teacher will not teach you anything useful. You start clinic in 3rd while other schools start 1st yr seeing patients. You will be puppets for the school so they can do "vision screenings" at elementary schools all around the island to refer back to their clinics (you only do minimal vision screenings for two years before you ever get into real clinical settings performing eye exams). and these are just some of the academic/clinical faults. You have certain professors making inappropriate sexual advances towards students, drs sleeping with students, heavy drug use in the dorms (cocaine and marijuana). I don't mean this to discourage anyone from going there I simply wish these were things that someone told me before I went so I knew what I was getting into.
They take forever to respond. Few years ago they accepted people during the first week of classes though those were islanders and they dont deny islanders at all they try to get as many Puerto Ricans as they can into the program regardless of their stats. So breathe you can try contacting them they accept applications until June 1st so trust me they take their sweet time you many not find out anything until July or august
