Southern California College of Optometry at Marshall B. Ketchum University: Admissions, Tuition and Program Facts

Southern California College of Optometry (SCCO) is the college of optometry at Marshall B. Ketchum University, a school ASCO classes as private in its 2025-26 Annual Student Data Report.

The program's own pages sit at ketchum.edu/optometry, the address ACOE's directory entry gives for it.

For the professional OD program, SCCO holds ACOE accreditation status 'Accredited,' with its next site visit scheduled for 2031, per ACOE's directory dated August 17, 2026.

ACOE — the Accreditation Council on Optometric Education — is the recognized accreditor for professional OD degree programs in the US and Canada.

The 2025 entering class was 103 first-year matriculants against 103 first-year slots, per ASCO's Profile of the 2025 Entering Class.

Class profiles move year to year, so treat 103 as one cycle's size.

The national reports behind this page — ACOE's directory, ASCO's student data and NBEO's exam report — identify the school by name; ACOE's directory entry gives the program website but no street address.

Ketchum.edu/optometry is the place to check for campus location, tours and visit details.

Applications run through OptomCAS.

For the 2026-27 cycle, which opened June 25, 2026, OptomCAS lists SCCO's application deadline as 3/15/27, a $50 supplemental fee with a 3/15/27 supplemental deadline, and 3/15/27 as the last OAT date accepted.

The same listing states that a bachelor's degree is 'recommended but not required,' that the OAT is the preferred admission test, and that DAT and MCAT scores are accepted.

For the 2025 entering class, ASCO counted 423 verified OptomCAS applicants to SCCO and 165 admits — 124 in-state, 36 out-of-state and 5 foreign.

That works out to roughly 39% of applicants admitted, computed from ASCO's counts rather than published by ASCO as a rate.

The averages behind the admits: applicants to SCCO averaged a 3.34 GPA overall and 3.54 among admitted applicants.

OAT Academic Average ran 323 for all applicants and 343 for admitted ones; Total Science ran 308 and 338.

The class that enrolled averaged a 3.54 GPA, with 98% holding a bachelor's degree, and scored an average 343 on the OAT Academic Average and 340 in Total Science.

These are one cycle's averages, not cutoffs — the sources we use report class profiles, not SCCO's minimum requirements.

SCCO reported first-year OD tuition of $53,250 for 2025-26 to ASCO, the same figure for residents and non-residents, in a report that classes the school as private.

Those tuition figures exclude fees, books and instruments.

Debt is the other half of the cost question.

Among SCCO's 2024-25 graduates, 75.0% carried optometric educational debt, averaging $216,766 per graduate with debt, or $162,575 when averaged across all graduates.

ASCO's debt figures exclude undergraduate debt.

What happens to that debt after graduation is its own topic: repayment and forgiveness routes for OD debt are covered separately.

On residencies, ASCO's 2025-26 listing reports 43 residents in optometry residency programs affiliated with SCCO.

What residency involves, the program types and whether one is worth it are covered in how optometry residencies work.

Clinics and externships are a different story.

The ASCO, ACOE and NBEO reports behind this page count students, residents and exam results; they do not list SCCO's clinic sites or its externship network, so this page cannot enumerate them.

Treat that as an interview question rather than a gap you have to live with: where third- and fourth-year students rotate, how sites are assigned, and what the final year's schedule looks like.

The program's pages at ketchum.edu/optometry and its admissions office are the sources for those details.

NBEO's institutional report for October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 counted 90 SCCO graduates who attempted all three parts.

First-time pass rates were 74.44% for Part I (ABS), 93.33% for Part II (PAM) and 72.22% for Part III (PEPS), and 93.33% ultimately passed all three.

The national figures for US schools in the same report were 66.83%, 87.96%, 70.09% and 82.49%.

Read the two sets on the same terms: NBEO's institutional rates count only graduates of the period who attempted all three parts at least once, and 'ultimate pass rate' means the share who passed all three.

What each part covers is explained in the NBEO exams.

On jobs: the ASCO and NBEO reports behind this page carry no job placement rate by school, so where SCCO graduates land is not something our research can quantify.

The destination itself is easier to map — first associate jobs after graduation, and what to read before signing an associate contract.

A license comes before any of it.

There is no national optometry license: each of the 51 US jurisdictions sets its own requirements, typically an ACOE-accredited OD degree plus passing the NBEO licensure exams, and state licensing requirements decide the rest.

Start with what our research did not find: no official ranking of optometry schools appears in any source we checked — no accreditor or ASCO ranking — so the honest comparison runs on the figures the schools themselves report.

ACOE's August 17, 2026 directory lists three accredited OD programs in California: SCCO, the UC Berkeley Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science, and Western University of Health Sciences College of Optometry (WUCO).

All three hold 'Accredited' status, with next site visits in 2031, 2032 and 2030.

The comparison below runs on the figures the schools report to ASCO and NBEO.

Every column draws on the same series and periods: the tuition table in ASCO's 2025-26 Annual Student Data Report, ASCO's 2025 applicant and entering-class profiles, and NBEO's October 2024 to September 2025 institutional report.

The admitted counts are computed from ASCO's figures — not rates ASCO publishes — and tuition excludes fees, books and instruments.

Two cells need context.

UC Berkeley's class averages include 24 of 69 matriculants who entered with no admission test, and almost all of its out-of-state students convert to in-state tuition before their second year — a route ASCO's footnote says is not available to non-US citizens.

Berkeley's tuition row shows resident and non-resident rates; the two private programs charge one rate.

The board column moves the most, and it rests on small cohorts — 90, 64 and 57 test-takers in one report year — so treat a single year as a data point, not a verdict.

For the wider picture, all optometry schools compares every accredited US program on the same figures.

Career information, not medical, licensing or legal advice. Figures are as the sources reported them for the years named: confirm admission requirements, deadlines and costs with SCCO and OptomCAS, accreditation status with ACOE, and licensure requirements with the state board where you plan to practice.