How to Become an Optometrist: Step-by-Step Career Path

The route to optometry runs through six broad steps: undergraduate science coursework, the Optometry Admission Test (OAT) and applications, four years of optometry school, the national board exams, a state license, and an optional residency before your first job.

Two framing facts help before you start.

Applicants to O.D. programs must have completed at least three years of undergraduate education, though they typically hold a bachelor's degree.

And licensure is state by state — there is no national optometry license.

Every U.S. jurisdiction, the states plus the District of Columbia, sets its own requirements: typically an ACOE-accredited O.D. degree plus passing the NBEO licensure exams.

Each step carries its own detail — deadlines, fees, retake rules — and the rest of this guide walks through them in order.

For what the job looks like after the license, the optometrist career guide covers duties, settings and career models.

Formal entry requirements start with time: applicants to O.D. programs must have completed at least three years of undergraduate education, though applicants typically hold a bachelor's degree.

Coursework matters as much as the clock.

ASCO says general prerequisites for most optometry programs include at least one year each of biology or zoology, general chemistry, general physics, English and college math, and it tells applicants to check each school about AP and online credit.

Beyond those prerequisites, ASCO's general requirements name coursework, not a specific major, and each program sets its own list — read each target program's admissions pages closely rather than assuming one school's list matches another's.

Undergrad is also when practical exposure starts.

Shadowing an optometrist gives you a first look at the exam room, and it can give you concrete material for application essays.

Paid clinical experience is another way in.

One route is to work as a tech first: an optometric technician job puts you inside a practice around ODs every day, close enough to ask real questions about the work.

The entrance exam for O.D. programs covers natural sciences, reading comprehension, physics and quantitative reasoning.

That exam is the Optometry Admission Test, or OAT.

Know the retake rules before you schedule it.

Candidates must wait 60 days between attempts and may test at most four times in any 12-month period.

Permission, with proof of an optometry school application, is needed to test after three attempts; after a fifth attempt you may retest only once per 12 months.

Applications run through OptomCAS, the centralized application service.

OptomCAS says all 25 U.S. schools and colleges of optometry participate in it.

Deadlines, essay prompts and prerequisite verification are set cycle by cycle, so build your school list early and work from each program's current admissions requirements — not last year's.

O.D. programs take four years, and accreditation is the non-negotiable part.

BLS puts it plainly: prospective optometrists must have an O.D. degree from an accredited optometry school and must complete all sections of a qualifying exam.

ACOE is the accreditor.

Its directory of accredited programs, dated August 17, 2026, lists 24 U.S. programs — including Inter American University in Puerto Rico — plus 2 in Canada.

The degree trains you for the work BLS lists for the profession: vision tests, diagnosing refractive errors and eye diseases such as glaucoma, and prescribing glasses, contacts and visual aids.

It also covers minor surgical procedures and medications as permitted by state law, vision therapy or low-vision rehabilitation, pre- and post-operative care, and screening for diseases like diabetes with referral.

The clinical years run through rotations and externships, and private practices host the largest share of them.

In ASCO's 2024-25 externship survey, U.S. member schools reported 931 affiliated private-practice externship sites with 2,054 externships completed — the largest setting — ahead of the VA's 422 sites and 1,359 externships and co-management centers' 293 sites and 843 externships.

The VA is deeply woven into optometric training by its own account: about 70% of the 1,500-1,600 annual graduates of ACOE-accredited schools train at VHA facilities every year, and VA medical facilities host externships at over 125 sites.

Boards begin before graduation for some parts: NBEO lets students take Part II PAM/TMOD, Part III PEPS, the ISE and the LSPE during their academic year of graduation.

Licensing is where the national exam meets state law.

There is no national optometry license — each of the 51 U.S. jurisdictions sets its own requirements, and BLS says all states require licensure.

The common pattern, per BLS: an accredited O.D. plus all sections of a qualifying exam, which is NBEO's battery.

Some states require candidates to pass an additional exam, such as on clinical skills or on laws relating to optometry.

NBEO's current entry exams are Part I ABS, Part II PAM and Part III PEPS, plus the ISE and LSPE — which of them a state requires varies.

For administrations beginning August 2026, each of the three core parts carries a fee of $1,490.

The retake rules are strict.

NBEO requires candidates to pass each entry exam within its first six attempts, and any started exam counts as an attempt.

After six attempts, a candidate needs a sponsor, a remediation plan, a $300 non-refundable request fee and approval by an NBEO committee — and if that extra attempt fails, no further request is allowed.

One naming note while you research: older sources call Part III the CSE.

The current exam is PEPS, and attempts on the old CSE and the current PEPS count toward one combined six-attempt limit.

Finally, keep two credentialing facts straight.

Licenses must be kept current through continuing education and periodic renewal.

And passing the NBEO is not the same as board certification — board certification is optional, and NBEO tells candidates to apply to the American Board of Optometry for it.

Residency is optional.

After finishing an O.D. degree, optometrists may choose one year of advanced clinical training in the area they wish to specialize in — BLS names primary care, cornea and contact lenses, and ocular disease among the areas — and residency is not required for licensure.

If you want one, placement runs through ORMatch, the optometry residency match.

In the 2026 match, for positions beginning in 2026, 283 programs at 271 sites offered 518 positions; 455 applicants participated and 356 matched — 78% of participants — leaving 162 positions (31%) unfilled in the Match.

Unfilled positions can be filled in a post-match process, so final residency counts run higher than the match results alone.

Measured against the 1,500-1,600 annual graduates VA cites, roughly a quarter of a graduating class matched to a residency in 2026 — our calculation from the two figures, not a published rate.

The VA runs the largest optometric clinical training program in the United States by its own count, with over 215 ACOE-accredited residency positions and about 1,400 externship positions a year — and prior VA residents get preference for VA staff positions.

VA residency applicants must be U.S. citizens with an O.D. from an ACOE-accredited school by July 1 of the residency year, must obtain a state license before completing the residency, and apply through ORMatch.

A timing note from NBEO: because PEPS scores take 6-8 weeks to report, NBEO advises residency applicants to sit Part III before January — January scores arrive in March, possibly after ORMatch's Match Day.

With the license in hand, the first-job question is mostly about setting.

Per BLS, the largest employer settings for optometrists in 2025 were offices of optometrists (61%), offices of physicians (14%), retail trade (13%), self-employed work (5%) and outpatient care centers (4%).

Read that as a setting mix, not an ownership statistic — the self-employed slice is not a practice-ownership rate.

First roles fall into a few broad shapes: an associate position in a private practice, an employed or leased position in a retail or commercial setting, a role in an OD-MD medical group, or public practice in systems like the VA.

For the private-practice route, the associate optometrist guide covers contracts, compensation structures and the first-year learning curve.

Retail and commercial settings work differently: the corporate optometrist guide explains the employed, professional-corporation and sublease models.

The market context, per BLS: about 45,100 optometrist jobs in 2025, projected to grow 10% to 49,400 by 2035 — much faster than average — with about 2,000 openings a year.

That count includes the self-employed.

Browse optometrist jobs to see what is live on OptometryHires today — the board lists eye care work only.

Honestly: no single step is exotic, but the path is long, gated and expensive, and each gate has real numbers attached.

The boards are the clearest example.

In NBEO's institutional reporting for October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025, the 1,628 U.S. graduates who attempted all three parts posted first-time pass rates of 66.83% for Part I ABS, 87.96% for Part II PAM and 70.09% for Part III, reported as CSE/PEPS.

Within the same reporting period, 82.49% had passed all three parts — the report's ultimate pass rate.

Debt is the other number to face early.

ASCO's 2025-26 Annual Student Data Report puts average educational indebtedness at $209,280 for 2024-25 graduates who had debt — graduate and professional debt only, excluding undergraduate debt — with 78.6% of the 1,340 graduates reported carrying debt and an average of $164,575 across all graduates.

Those ASCO figures come from the schools that report; not every school does.

And the residency route, if you want it, is a match to win: 356 of 455 participants matched in 2026.

What makes the path manageable is that the sequence is knowable from the start: prerequisites, OAT, four years, boards, license, job.

Whatever your starting point, the next step is a concrete one — and whether optometry is a good career for you is a question worth answering in its own right.

Career information, not medical, clinical, licensing, legal or billing advice. Exam formats, fees and license requirements change — confirm current requirements with NBEO, with the OAT's administrators and with your state board of optometry.