Year off

[physicslover]

Hi Guys,
So I'm fairly positive I am not getting into Optometry school this cycle. I'm graduating with B.Sc and would like to reapply for next cycle. Probably going to retake some courses in the summer and raise the GPA. What should I do in my year off? What type of work should I pursue? Other than optometric assistant, which is fairly hard to land. Research? Business? Will they frown upon me, if I just take job that has nothing to do with Optometry?

If anyone else had a similar experience, and are willing to share what they did in their year off, please do tell! Thank ya

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[Mewcakes]

I'm sorry to hear that. :-/. I took time off between my undergrad completion and my od school admission. I worked in optometry the whole way but made peanuts. After having 2 solid years (like way over 1000 hours, literally) of optometric experience, the only thing more that I learned was how to be excellent and to take accountability from Lenscrafters (any LC slaves out there?). That was a sarcastic remark, btw. If you have a butt-load, or even half a butt-load of experience already, I think adcons will forgive you for working at cheesecake factory because you needed to pay bills.

I know a guy who applied to UCDavis vet school, which is a top of the line vet school as I understand it. I'm not sure how he did on...I don't know the name for the test, vcats? Well whatever. I don't know how he did on them, but he had an average gpa, just some vet experience and wrestling on his app. He currently works at the enterprise rental car in town and they asked him why he wasn't doing something animaly and he basically told them he had bills to pay and they acknowledge that. Long and irrelevant story short, as long as you have enough experience, adcoms may understand that we need to make money to live and they know you dont get paid much being an optician or optometric assistant.

 

[KHE]

Hi Guys,
So I'm fairly positive I am not getting into Optometry school this cycle. I'm graduating with B.Sc and would like to reapply for next cycle. Probably going to retake some courses in the summer and raise the GPA. What should I do in my year off? What type of work should I pursue? Other than optometric assistant, which is fairly hard to land. Research? Business? Will they frown upon me, if I just take job that has nothing to do with Optometry?

If anyone else had a similar experience, and are willing to share what they did in their year off, please do tell! Thank ya

If you have a few schools that you are interested in, I would strongly suggest that you phone THEM and ask them what would make your application more competitive. No point in taking a job or retaking classes if that's not what your problem was.

It might be something as simple as getting your application in as early as possible.

But again, ask them.

 

[Rinny]

Just a hint for searching for optometric assistant jobs: try looking on craigslist. I periodically do that for my city and there are always at least a few listed at any given time. Also, don't rule out working as an ophthalmic assistant. That's what I did and every opto school that I interviewed at seemed to think it was great experience. Even though the professions are not the same, if you work as an assistant for a general ophthalmologist the tasks you will do will be very similar to what you would have done in an optometry practice, with a few exceptions. If you aren't familiar with craigslist just PM me and I will fill you in

 

[physicslover]

thanks guys for the advice.

Rinny- thanks for the great tip I found much more positions than I had previously!

KHE- Yea, I contacted the schools, they basically said it was my pre-req GPA, which is why I am redoing those courses.

 

[socal2014]

physicslover,

I was told if you do better in your upper division bio courses (which are required anyways to graduate with a BSc. degree) then the pre-reqs don't really matter?

 

[Mewcakes]

I don't think I would agree. I mean, that's why they have a separate pre-req gpa and overall gpa. I doubt they would be lenient about their own prereqs if someone got an A in like human genetics.

 

[physicslover]

I'm not sure how the whole upper year science courses grades come into play.
Most people tend to repeat pre-req courses rather than upper year courses