I applied at the end of September and felt like I was late...but I was really early. I didn't realize how late tons of people apply (would NOT recommend that!). The schools have said that they get a huge wave of applications in July when the system opens, then it drops down for a few months, then another huge wave in November/December, then it drops down, then another huge wave in Feb/March.
If you aren't going to re-take the classes until next summer, then it's really not worth retaking them at all. That's because the schools will only make their decision on you based on grades they have in hand. By next summer, they will have their classes filled and just be pulling off an already long waitlist as they fill spots from people shuffling around which school they will attend (if they were accepted to multiple ones) or people deciding not to pursue optometry school and go for any other programs they got into. You want to have your spot by at least February (and Feb spots go to people who submit in Nov, interview in January, and get an acceptance in Feb...remember schools shut down for about a month between Dec and Jan and don't process applications).
So yea...I think that's really too late to take the classes again. But honestly, you should get into programs even with a couple lower grades. Where do you want to attend? If those classes are the only thing making you wait to apply, then I would submit sometime between July and September to really make things easier for yourself!
Have you taken the OAT? If not, doing really well in the sections where you got lower grades will *really* help your case! Study hard in those sections!
What classes are your C's in? What's your overall GPA? And science GPA?
Like I said, I applied at the end of September. I got my first interview offers about a week after OptomCAS finished processing my application (took a couple weeks because one of my transcripts was just arriving - have those sent EARLY). I interviewed and was accepted to one school at the end of October, then another two schools by the end of November. I turned down one interview since it was lower on my list than those three schools. I interviewed at Berkeley in Feb (they just have one interview day for everyone) and was accepted there in March, so that's where I'll be going! I was still finishing 3 pre-req classes during the fall semester when I applied, so don't stress if you have some left.
As for being put on hold or on a waitlist...both are important and unique. There's "on hold", which means that they are waiting for you to finish something or redo something - maybe a class, maybe the OAT. To get off of that, you need to have significantly improved something and submitted it to them. They will hopefully give you an idea of exactly what type of improvement they are looking for - it would be silly for a school to leave you in the dark on that. Communicate a lot with the admissions office if that happens to you. Waitlist is the other important status. Getting on the waitlist means that they aren't looking for any changes in your application - they just want to see more of the applicant pool before deciding on you. They usually pull off the waitlist sometime between March and August and your chances of getting in from a waitlist vary considerably every year because they applicant pool can vary a lot. Some schools make huge waitlists, other schools maintain tiny ones. It really varies a lot in that case. If you get put on a waitlist for your top choice, but get in somewhere else...it's worth putting the deposit down where you did get in, and then just sacrificing that later if you get off the waitlist at your #1. Since my Berkeley interview was months later, I went ahead and put down a deposit at my #2 school so that I would definitely be going *somewhere*. I ended up losing $500, but that's tiny compared to what optometry school costs
. Schools give you anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks to accept or decline admissions there.
Hope that helps! I know it's a crazy process that seems pretty foreign when you first start it
This forum helped me a lot, but I think the #1 thing you can do to put yourself in a good position is to stay in constant communication with admissions offices. It boggles my mind how some people wait 2 or 3 months and complain on here that they haven't heard from a school, but they also haven't bothered to call or email the school. I'm sure what happened to me was a rare one, but I actually didn't receive an interview offer to my #2 school for what seemed like a long time to me. I had heard from all the other schools, so that seemed weird to hear nothing (not even a no). So I called them and they said they'd sent it out a week before. Somehow it didn't come through to my email (even though they had the right email). When they resent it, both of the emails popped up in my gmail. Kind of weird, but if I hadn't checked with them, I would have had no idea about the interview offer!