Optometry Schools in the US: Every ACOE-Accredited Doctor of Optometry Program

There are 24 accredited optometry schools in the United States, counted from ACOE's directory of OD programs dated August 17, 2026.

The Accreditation Council on Optometric Education (ACOE) is the recognized accreditor for professional OD degree programs, optometric residency programs and optometric technician programs in the US and Canada.

Both the U.S. Department of Education and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation recognize it as an accreditor.

The same directory lists 26 programs: the 24 US programs — including Inter American University in Puerto Rico — plus 2 in Canada, the University of Waterloo and the Université de Montréal.

Of the 24 US programs, 22 hold 'Accredited' status, and both Canadian schools are 'Accredited' too.

The other 2 US programs hold 'Accredited with Conditions', which ACOE defines as a status for programs with major deficiencies or weaknesses against the standards, signalling that educational effectiveness is in jeopardy.

One more program sits just outside that list.

The University of Detroit Mercy School of Optometry in Novi, Michigan is the only OD program holding Preliminary Approval — ACOE's preaccreditation — as of its July 27, 2026 directory.

For applicants, the practical count is 25.

OptomCAS counts 25 schools and colleges of optometry in the US, and all 25 participate in it — the 24 accredited programs plus Detroit Mercy, whose Preliminary Approval allows it to recruit and admit students.

The table below is the full ACOE directory as of August 17, 2026, ordered by state.

Nine of the US schools are public — Indiana, Ferris State, NSU Oklahoma, Ohio State, SUNY, UAB, UC Berkeley, Houston and UMSL — and the rest are private.

Two rows repay a second look.

The Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Drexel University is the former Salus University optometry school: Drexel completed its merger with Salus on July 3, 2025, and the program now operates as PCO at Drexel from the Elkins Park campus.

Inter American's status line is not the whole story either — its accreditation withdrawal, now in reconsideration, is covered in the next section.

The two Canadian rows appear because ACOE accredits those schools alongside the US programs; Waterloo and Montréal are ASCO 'associate members', the category for non-US optometry schools holding an ACOE status.

Next site visits are as printed in the August 17, 2026 directory.

Rocky Mountain's 'Accredited with Conditions' dates to its initial accreditation on March 18, 2026, which also set an interim site visit for spring 2030.

A new optometry school cannot simply open and enroll a class.

A proposed program must earn ACOE's Stage One and then Stage Two designation before it can be considered for Preliminary Approval, and neither stage is a formal preaccreditation status or confers any rights of accreditation.

The gate that matters to applicants: programs holding only Stage One or Stage Two designation are prohibited from recruiting or enrolling students.

Preliminary Approval is ACOE's only status for a new OD program that allows recruiting and admitting students, and ACOE will not grant 'Accredited' or 'Accredited with Conditions' until a program is fully operational — in its fourth year.

One program holds that Preliminary Approval rung: Detroit Mercy, whose first OD class matriculated in 2025.

At its June 17-19, 2026 meeting, ACOE continued the school's Preliminary Approval after a site visit, while requiring progress reports on Standards I, II, V, VI and VIII and setting the next visit for spring 2027.

Three more programs are still developing.

As of ACOE's July 27, 2026 directory, UNC Pembroke College of Optometric Medicine (Pembroke, NC) and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Optometry (McAllen, TX) hold only Stage One designation.

High Point University School of Optometry (NC) holds Stage Two.

None of the three may yet recruit or enroll students.

ASCO lists all three as provisional members whose first classes had not yet matriculated as of its 2025-26 report.

High Point says the on-site evaluation visit for Preliminary Approval consideration was completed in May 2026.

No Preliminary Approval decision appears in the sources we checked.

The university describes its planned school as North Carolina's first private school of optometry, part of a $400 million academic expansion.

The most recently accredited program is Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions College of Optometric Medicine in Provo, Utah, whose first class matriculated in 2023.

ACOE granted it initial accreditation as of March 18, 2026 with the status 'Accredited with Conditions' and an interim site visit in spring 2030.

ACOE's findings against the Rocky Mountain program in 2026 included an incorrect published first-time pass rate for NBEO Part I takers between September 1, 2024 and August 31, 2025, and an inaccurate published faculty roster.

By ACOE's own definition, 'Accredited with Conditions' signals that educational effectiveness is in jeopardy — one more thing to weigh in your research.

Inter American University of Puerto Rico's accreditation has moved repeatedly.

ACOE lowered the program to 'Accredited with Conditions' at its June 2024 meeting, a decision that became final on August 10, 2024.

At its June 17-19, 2026 meeting, ACOE decided to withdraw accreditation because the program remained out of compliance with 2025 Standard 2.7 at the May 15, 2026 deadline, and the program was notified on July 17, 2026.

Inter American then filed a petition for reconsideration, so its status remains 'Accredited with Conditions' while that petition is pending — the withdrawal was not final as of ACOE's August 14, 2026 update.

If the withdrawal does become final, ACOE has said the program may stay in an accreditation status for a teach-out period ending no later than July 1, 2030.

The school describes its Doctor of Optometry program as bilingual.

In aggregate, ASCO's 2025-26 survey covered all 25 US programs with enrolled students and counted 7,368 full-time OD students in fall 2025, up 1.7% from 7,247 the year before.

US schools graduated 1,712 ODs in 2025, down 4.4% from 1,791 in 2024, with 23 schools awarding degrees.

Cost varies widely from school to school.

For 2025-26, average first-year tuition was $31,531 for residents at public schools and $46,039 at private schools; non-residents paid an average of $48,158 at public schools and $46,981 at private ones.

For outcomes, the national benchmark is NBEO performance.

Across all US schools in NBEO's October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025 report, 1,628 graduates attempted all three parts.

First-time pass rates were 66.83% for Part I, 87.96% for Part II and 70.09% for Part III, and 82.49% had passed all three.

The table below compares the 25 US programs with enrolled students — the 24 accredited schools plus Detroit Mercy — on the figures schools themselves report.

The two Canadian programs are left out: our research collected US tuition and class figures only.

Read the columns as the schools reported them.

Tuition is first-year 2025-26; ASCO's report notes the figures exclude fees, books and instruments and are subject to change.

Class figures are each school's 2025 entering class from ASCO's Profile of the 2025 Entering Class, as are the GPA and OAT Academic Average columns, and schools report resident and non-resident rates where both exist.

Indiana's OAT cell is blank on purpose.

IU did not require the OAT for its 2025 entering class, and all 92 matriculants entered with no admission test.

UC Berkeley admitted 24 of its 69 matriculants with no exam, so its 360 average reflects test-takers only.

Out-of-state costs at some public schools drop after year one.

At SUNY and UC Berkeley, almost all out-of-state students convert to in-state tuition before their second year — a conversion not available to non-US citizens — and Ohio State reduces its non-resident fee to $5 per semester for years 2-4.

Our research found no official ranking of optometry schools — no accreditor or ASCO ranking appears in the sources we checked — so the decision runs on the factors you can verify, starting with cost.

Public schools price residents well below private schools on average — $31,531 versus $46,039 in first-year tuition for 2025-26.

The nine publics in the table above are the only public OD programs in the country in ASCO's 2025-26 report, and two of them let out-of-state students convert to in-state tuition before year two.

State contracts cut the cost for some students.

In 2025-26, 411 OD students were enrolled under state contract agreements; Southern College of Optometry alone hosted 191, funded by Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.

In 2025-26, most state contract seats paid $21,475 when funded by western states (Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Utah, Wyoming and North Dakota) or $21,184 when funded by southern states (Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina), per student per year toward tuition.

Tennessee paid $14,354 at SCO, and Kentucky paid $15,000 at IU and Pikeville.

Applications run through OptomCAS, which all 25 US schools participate in.

The 2026-2027 cycle opened on June 25, 2026 and closes to all submissions on May 20, 2027, and the service charges $190 for the first school and $85 for each additional one.

Every US school accepts OAT results — ASCO governs the exam and the ADA's Department of Testing Services administers it.

Scores run from 200 to 400 in 10-point increments, there is no official passing score, and each program decides what it accepts.

ASCO's general prerequisites for most optometry programs include at least one year each of biology or zoology, general chemistry, general physics, English and college math, with each school making its own rules on AP and online credit.

For a benchmark, accepted OptomCAS applicants in 2024-25 averaged a 3.56 overall and a 3.45 science GPA, and 2,099 of 2,897 applicants — 72% — were accepted to at least one program.

If the four-year length is the obstacle, several schools compress it.

NECO runs a 36-month Accelerated Optometric Degree Program for holders of a doctorate in science or medicine, plus a two-year program for international optometry graduates.

UAB's Advanced International Optometric Degree Program takes 2.5 years, Indiana offers Advanced Placement into its OD program for graduates of accredited international optometry programs, and PCO at Drexel's Accelerated Scholars Program completes the full OD in 36 months, year-round and campus-based.

Nova Southeastern goes the other way for non-traditional students, with an extended five-year program, and has begun a three-year Advanced Standing program.

The degree itself is four years, per BLS, after at least three years of undergraduate education — applicants typically hold a bachelor's.

What happens in year four decides the next step, so it pays to know the routes off campus.

Graduation requirements are school-set.

Only 7 of the 25 US programs require students to take an NBEO (or OEBC) exam to graduate, and only 3 require passing one.

The three are Inter American (Part I), SCO (Parts I and II or OEBC) and Detroit Mercy (Parts I, II and III).

Every state requires a license to practice on top of the degree.

Residency is the first route off campus.

Optometric residencies are one-year, post-graduate experiential programs that advance patient-care skills beyond entry-level practice, and ASCO counted 415 residents in programs affiliated with US and Canadian schools in 2025-26.

ASCO's residency directory data show a mean stipend of $50,539 and a median of $49,000 in 2025-26.

Positions are matched through the annual ORMatch.

In 2026, 455 applicants participated and 356 matched — 78% — while 99, or 22%, did not match.

Programs offered 518 positions across 283 programs at 271 sites, and 356 of them, 69%, filled in the Match.

VA facilities carry much of that training.

By the VA's count, 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 more than 125 VA medical facilities.

VA optometry education spans student externships, post-doctoral residencies and post-residency advanced fellowships, and VA residents all train in primary eye care and ocular disease management.

The second route is straight into practice, and that is where this site comes in.

The optometrist career guide maps the modes an OD can practice in — associate, corporate, fill-in, medical and specialty work — and current optometrist jobs show which of them are hiring now.

Career information, not medical, licensing or legal advice. Confirm accreditation status with ACOE, and admission, graduation and licensure requirements with each school and the state board of optometry where you plan to practice.