<p>Hello, I am currently a junior in NJ.
I wish to become an optometrist, and I wished to go to a college in New Jersey. But someone says that there are only 17 colleges in our nation that have the optometry programs, and none of them are in NJ.</p>
<p>But then someone also says that TCNJ, Rutgers, and Ramapo also have the optometry programs.</p>
<p>I am VERY CONFUSED now.</p>
<p>Could someone PLEASE explain to me what is going on?</p>
<p>Oh, and also, how competitive is it to get into these colleges?</p>
<p>Thank you :-)</p>
<p>Optometry school is a professional school - just like law, medicine, pharmacy, and dental (among others). That means you need to go to undergrad first (which you could certainly do in NJ), take the required pre-optometry courses, the OAT, and apply to the 17 schools of optometry in the US.</p>
<p>Here's a list of the 17:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.opted.org/info_links.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.opted.org/info_links.cfm</a></p>
<ul>
<li>you should probably bookmark opted.org for future reference as you continue pursuing this path, it has pretty much all the information you'd need to know.</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks!!
I also wanted to know whether
its better to major in bio or in chem....</p>
<p>Or does it matter?</p>
<p>You could probably major in anything. As long as you get a good GPA and work hard, you can get accepted to professional school. (although I will admit I know nothing about optometry school admissions....) However, I do have a friend who majored in History and then went to medical school. He just squeezed in the required science classes.</p>
<p>Try studentdoctor.net. They specialize in academics in the healthcare fields and have tens of thousands of members.</p>
<p>I think you can take the required courses at 2-year community college even.</p>