New England College of Optometry (NECO) is a private optometry school in Boston whose OD program holds ACOE's 'Accredited' status, with the next site visit scheduled for 2029.
Its 2025 entering class averaged a 3.56 GPA and a 331 OAT Academic Average, and first-year tuition is $49,852 for 2025-26.
This page assembles the applicant-facing numbers — admissions, cost, accelerated tracks, residencies and board pass rates — from ASCO, NBEO and ACOE reports, with dates attached.
Where is NECO and how big is the class?
New England College of Optometry — NECO — is a private optometry school in Boston.
The state's other OD program is MCPHS School of Optometry in Worcester.
ACOE — the Accreditation Council on Optometric Education, the recognized accreditor for professional OD programs — lists NECO's program as 'Accredited,' with the next site visit scheduled for 2029 in the directory dated August 17, 2026.
Class size: NECO's 2025 entering class had 140 first-year matriculants, matching its 140 first-year slots.
The OD takes 4 years to complete under BLS's typical path, after at least 3 years of undergraduate education — and applicants typically hold a bachelor's degree.
NECO also runs two accelerated routes alongside the traditional track.
The Accelerated Optometric Degree Program (AODP), for holders of a doctorate in science or medicine, runs an intense 36-month curriculum.
The Advanced Standing International Program lets international optometry graduates finish the OD in two years.
ASCO counted 26 NECO students across alternate and special OD programs in 2025-26.
What are NECO's admission requirements and stats?
Applications run through OptomCAS.
The 2026-2027 cycle opened June 25, 2026 and closes to all submissions May 20, 2027, with deadlines closing at 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
OptomCAS charges $190 for the first school and $85 for each additional school.
For the 2026-27 cycle, OptomCAS lists NECO's deadline as 3/31/27, a supplemental fee of $30 with waivers available, and a last accepted OAT date of 5/15/27.
OptomCAS lists NECO's bachelor's degree requirement as 'No,' and its 'other tests accepted' column includes the GRE, MCAT and DAT alongside the OAT.
On coursework, ASCO's published guidance says most optometry programs require at least one year each of biology or zoology, general chemistry, general physics, English and college math.
Letters are prescribed rather than open-ended: NECO requires one recommendation from a non-relative optometrist and one from a college faculty member, preferably in the sciences.
How competitive is the pool?
ASCO counted 870 verified OptomCAS applicants for NECO's 2025 entering class and 413 admits — 23 in-state, 276 out-of-state and 114 foreign.
Computed from those counts, roughly 47% of applicants were admitted — our arithmetic from ASCO's counts, not an ASCO-published rate.
Among all applicants, average overall GPA was 3.41; among admitted applicants, 3.61.
Average OAT Academic Average was 315 for all applicants and 337 for admitted applicants.
The class that enrolled averaged a 3.56 GPA, with 96% holding a bachelor's degree, an OAT Academic Average of 331 and a Total Science average of 327.
On the OAT scale, scores run from 200 to 400 in 10-point increments, and there is no official passing score — each program decides what it accepts.
The OAT exam guide covers the test in detail.
Dates and requirements move every cycle
How much does NECO cost?
NECO reported first-year OD tuition of $49,852 for 2025-26, the same figure for residents and non-residents — ASCO classes it as a private school.
ASCO's tuition figures exclude fees, books and instruments.
For scale, ASCO's report puts average first-year tuition at private schools at $46,039 for residents in 2025-26.
Average first-year direct expenses — tuition, fees, books and instruments — were $52,010 for residents at private schools.
Debt tells the financing story.
Among NECO's 2024-25 graduates, 75.4% had optometric educational debt, averaging $191,355 per graduate with debt.
Averaged across all NECO graduates — borrowers and non-borrowers — the figure is $144,327 with undergraduate debt excluded from these figures.
Nationally, 2024-25 graduates who borrowed averaged $209,280 and 78.6% of graduates had debt.
Federal loan rules changed on July 1, 2026: graduate and professional students — including OD students — can no longer take out new Grad PLUS loans.
The exception is students already enrolled in their program as of June 30, 2026 who had a Direct Loan for it, who keep access for their expected time to credential.
Federal Direct Unsubsidized borrowing is capped at $50,000 per academic year, with a $200,000 aggregate limit beyond undergraduate loans, reduced by any amount borrowed as a graduate (non-professional) student.
Targeted aid exists: North Carolina students at NECO can receive the North Carolina Forgivable Education Loan for Service, worth $14,000 per student in 2025-26.
What clinics, externships and residencies does it offer?
The ASCO, NBEO and ACOE reports behind this page do not list NECO's individual clinics or externship sites — for the current site network, use the school's own materials.
What the sources do show is how clinical training is structured.
NECO's AODP, for example, builds a full year of clinical rotations into its 36 months.
Nationally, fourth-year OD students rotate through external settings such as VA facilities, private practices, co-management centers, community health centers, military and Indian Health Service sites.
US schools reported 1,962 affiliated externship sites and 5,480 completed externships in 2024-25.
The VA says about 70% of the 1,500-1,600 annual graduates of US ACOE-accredited optometry schools train at VHA facilities, with student clinical training at over 125 VA medical facilities.
On residencies: ASCO counted 36 residents in 2025-26 in programs affiliated with NECO.
Optometric residencies are one-year, post-graduate programs that advance patient-care skills beyond entry-level practice, and the mean stipend in 2025-26 was $50,539 against a median of $49,000.
Seats are matched through ORMatch, which charges $350 to register — ten application credits included — and requires the OE Tracker number issued by the National Board of Examiners in Optometry.
In the 2026 Match, 455 applicants participated and 356 matched, or 78%.
How optometry residencies work covers the match, timing and program types.
How do graduates do on boards and in jobs?
NBEO's institutional report for October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 covers 116 NECO graduates who attempted all three parts at least once.
First-time pass rates were 64.66% on Part I (ABS), 87.93% on Part II (PAM) and 65.52% on Part III (PEPS).
The ultimate rate — the share who passed all three — was 79.31%, against a national US figure of 82.49% for the same period.
Read the counts carefully: NBEO's institutional rates include only graduates of the period who attempted all three parts at least once.
The degree is one step, not the finish — every state requires a license to practice.
What each NBEO exam covers and how OD licensing works by state are the next two reads.
On outcomes after graduation, our sources include no NECO placement rate, so we will not invent one.
For the job side, the first associate jobs after graduation guide covers the associate route into practice.
On pay, the BLS median annual wage for optometrists was $136,570 in May 2025 — a payroll figure that excludes self-employed ODs, including practice owners — and the optometrist salary guide has the full pay picture.
How does it compare with nearby schools?
No official ranking of optometry schools appears in the sources behind this page, so the comparison below is the published numbers themselves.
Massachusetts's other program is MCPHS School of Optometry in Worcester.
Two more Northeast programs round out the set: the public SUNY College of Optometry and the private Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Drexel University — the former Salus University school, which operates from Drexel's Elkins Park campus after the merger completed July 3, 2025.
Every figure below comes from ASCO's and NBEO's reports for the same cycle: first-year tuition for 2025-26, the 2025 entering class, and NBEO results from October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025.
| School | First-year tuition 2025-26 | 2025 entering class | Avg GPA | Avg OAT AA | NBEO ultimate pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NECO (private) | $49,852 | 140 | 3.56 | 331 | 79.31% |
| MCPHS Worcester (private) | $53,760 | 59 | 3.28 | 310 | 74.47% |
| SUNY College of Optometry (public) | $32,200 in-state / $52,700 out-of-state | 96 | 3.67 | 350 | 89.90% |
| PCO at Drexel (private) | $50,058 | 126 | 3.38 | 306 | 81.54% |
Selectivity on the same arithmetic: NECO admitted roughly 47% of 870 applicants, MCPHS roughly 42% of 535, SUNY roughly 30% of 467 and PCO at Drexel roughly 44% of 825 — computed from ASCO's counts, not published school rates.
Debt at graduation differs more: per 2024-25 graduate with debt, $191,355 at NECO, $250,459 at MCPHS, $176,050 at SUNY and $242,731 at PCO at Drexel.
The share of graduates carrying that debt runs from 56.9% at SUNY to 76.3% at PCO at Drexel, with NECO at 75.4% and MCPHS at 72.0%.
One wrinkle in SUNY's tuition row: almost all out-of-state OD students there convert to in-state tuition before their second year — a conversion not available to non-US citizens.
And the pass-rate column needs its own caveat: only 7 of the 25 US OD programs in ASCO's report require students to take an NBEO (or OEBC) exam to graduate, so the test-taking pools behind each school's rate differ.
The national table on all optometry schools puts these four alongside the other US programs with enrolled students.
Career information, not medical, licensing or legal advice. Confirm admission requirements, deadlines and costs with NECO and OptomCAS, accreditation status with ACOE, and licensure requirements with the state board of optometry where you plan to practice.