Okay, so here's the deal. I want to help you get into optometry school. Here is all my advise from experiences; take it or leave it. (I interviewed at 3 schools last year, ICO, Pacific and SUNY and got into all three. I'm not bragging, I'm just saying there may be a method to my madness 😉
I probably wouldn't mention the answer about "less chance of permanent damage". If I was your interviewer and you told me that, I would think that you were not confident in your abilities. If you're already thinking negatively (ie. How to get out of law suits when the occur), this may be concerning to your interviewer. Generally, it's best to keep things positive.
Another thing to note is I interviewed at 3 optometry schools last year and none of them asked me why I didn't want to be a physician. They all asked why I wanted to be an optometrist though. Be ready to answer that question, and answer it in a positive way. Too many people mistake the question, "why do you want to be an optometrist" with the question "why don't you want to be a physician". Very different questions, so realize what the're asking.
Obviously every answer you give for why you want to be an optometrist should be unique to yourself. That being said, there are many generic "right" answers as well. As you mentioned, most of your answers are selfish, that's okay, but I think you can make a stronger case for yourself if you throw in some selfless reasons. My reasons:
1) I want to help people (By itself, it's a dumb, overused answer. But you can spruce it up by saying, "I really love to work with kids/elderly ppl and I think often times there are way too many missed problems with kids which affect there ability to learn. I would love to really make a difference in their lives." )
2) Regular work schedule/family time is a great reason, probably one of the best reasons to go into optometry, so feel free to use that one
3) You could throw in your interest in pathology. All the optom schools seem to be getting really interested in pathology (for a better or worse), so you can say that you're really excited about seeing all sorts of ocular problems
4) Maybe mention something about being in a profession where you are continually learning...everyone likes to hear that. Then it makes you sound like you don't just want easy money, but you really want to learn
5) Last thing, and one of the hugest in my opinion. Talk about how great you can be for the profession. Whenever I brought this up with any school, they got really into me and basically after that point I could say whatever I wanted. As you know, opticians, optometrists and opthamologists (I can't even spell it) have a constant power struggle going on. Optometry schools (private ones at least) make their money from you, the student. So optometry schools want to make sure they are around for a long time. Go into your interview knowing about a couple of key issues, and explaining how you are going to fight for your profession and all that stuff. (Don't get into too controversial stuff like should optoms be doing surgery, because everyone sort of has different views on that). If you want to bring up an interesting point, you can talk about how Optician's in Canada can do refractions, and the threat of that moving to the U.S....and how you will fight adamently to stop it.
Above all else here is the secret to getting into optometry (and medical school for that matter). Be passionate. I don't care if you're not passionate, just do it! Do it! Use strong adjectives, "I would love to do this", "I am excited about"....
My post is long enough now, so hopefully you can extract some useful information from this. If you have any other specific questions, feel free to PM me of just post it on this form. Good luck!
ps. Little disclaimer: Obviously, you need to be yourself in the interview, so don't try to use my answers without A) Believing in them and/or B) Knowing a little bit about them.
