Test eyes, catch disease early, prescribe glasses, contacts and medication. A four-year doctorate, no surgical residency, and clinics in every town.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
The median pay is about $136,570 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $74,870 at the lower end to about $202,180 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
7 to 8 years after high school, on the usual route.
$160,000 to $295,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a license or registration before you can work.
Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$136,570
Bottom tenth
$74,870
Top tenth
$202,180
The national median is $136,570 a year, and the bottom tenth earn $74,870 or less. The survey counts optometrists paid a wage, so practice owners, who earn from the frames and lenses as well as the exams, are largely missing from it.
$109,400 a year
25% of optometrists earn this or less
This covers everyone in the job, not only beginners, because the survey publishes no separate starting figure. The job comes seven or eight years after high school with no residency required, and alongside a very large loan balance.
$165,120 a year or more
25% of employed optometrists earn this or more
The wage survey does not count practice owners. Moving from employee to owner is the biggest change in how you are paid in this career, and it makes you a small business owner with rent, staff, inventory and insurance billing to run.
Roughly, all in
$160,000 to $295,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a community college start into a public university in your own state for the bachelor's degree, then a public optometry school at the cheaper end of about $30,000 a year for four years. The high end is four full years of undergraduate study at $16,000 a year plus an optometry school nearer $55,000 a year. Both include $1,000 to $2,500 for the optometry admission test and applications, and several thousand more across the three parts of the national board exams and the state license. Graduate students cannot get a Pell Grant, so this is borrowed money, though work at a veterans hospital, a community health center or a public clinic can have the balance canceled after ten years of payments.
Roughly $160,000 to $295,000 in all. Fill out the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) every year. Graduate students cannot get a Pell Grant, so this is borrowed money, but working at a veterans hospital, a community health center or a public clinic makes you eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
Private practice
Your own office or a partnership. The most control, and you own the business risk.
Retail optical chains
A steady salary, patients supplied, and no business to run. Where many new graduates start.
Ophthalmology practices
Working alongside eye surgeons, handling the medical eye care and the pre-operative and post-operative visits.
Veterans hospitals and the military
A federal employer of optometrists, with a published pay scale, a pension and loan repayment programs.
Community health centers
Serving people who would otherwise get no eye care at all. It qualifies for loan forgiveness.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Undergraduate study, then a four-year clinical doctorate. No residency is required, which is why this route is shorter than medicine.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry, physics and calculus. Physics matters more here than in most health careers because optics is the whole foundation.
Undergraduate study
3 to 4 years
At least three years of college covering biology, chemistry, physics, math and English, and in practice almost everyone finishes a bachelor's degree first.
Optometry admission test
A few months of study
A standardized exam covering the sciences, reading and physics. Taken in your third or fourth year of college.
Doctor of optometry
4 years
Four years at one of the 25 schools and colleges of optometry in the United States. Classroom science first, then clinic rotations with real patients.
National board examinations and state license
Across the final two years
Three parts covering basic science, patient management and live clinical skills, then apply to your state board for a license.
Physics
Lenses, light and refraction. The single most useful subject for this career and the one applicants are weakest in.
Biology
The eye, the nervous system and the diseases that show up in both.
Chemistry
A prerequisite everywhere, and behind the eye medications you will prescribe.
Statistics
Reading research and interpreting screening results is part of the daily work.
You need a state license to practice optometry anywhere in the United States, and all fifty states issue one. Every state builds it on the same two things: a doctor of optometry degree from an accredited school, and passing scores on the national board examinations from NBEO (the National Board of Examiners in Optometry). Those come in three parts: applied basic science, patient assessment and management, and a live clinical skills examination with standardized patients. Most states add their own examination on state law. What differs state by state is scope of practice: which medications you may prescribe and which procedures you may perform.
In-state public optometry schools
States including California, Ohio, Alabama, Indiana, Texas, New York and Missouri host public programs, and in-state tuition is dramatically cheaper.
Private optometry colleges
Several long-established private schools, including some that only teach optometry. Higher tuition, no in-state discount.
Schools with veterans hospital rotations
A clinical year rotating through a veterans hospital gives you heavy medical eye care experience and a route into a federal job.
Optional residency year
A voluntary extra year in an area like ocular disease, pediatrics or low vision. Not required for a license, and useful if you want hospital or academic work.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Ocular disease
Glaucoma, diabetic eye disease and macular degeneration. The medical end of optometry, and a growing part.
Specialty contact lenses
Fitting scleral and custom lenses for damaged or misshapen corneas. Highly skilled work.
Pediatric optometry and vision therapy
Eye teaming, focus and tracking problems in children. Often a cash-pay practice.
Low vision rehabilitation
Helping people with permanent sight loss use what vision they have left.
Sports and performance vision
A small field working with athletes on tracking, reaction and depth perception.
Work in an optical shop first
A year as an optical assistant teaches you frames, lenses and patients before you ever apply.
Shadowing hours
Optometry schools expect to see documented hours with practicing optometrists, ideally in more than one setting.
Business classes
If you ever want to own a practice, accounting and management will matter more than anything clinical.
A second language
Spanish especially, in community clinics and retail optical.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Eight to fourteen patients, most booked for half an hour. Full eye exams: vision, refraction, eye pressure, a look at the back of the eye, a scan if something looks wrong. Explaining to someone that the blurring is a cataract, or that their diabetes is showing up in their retina and their doctor needs to know. Fitting contact lenses and teaching a teenager to insert them. Prescribing eye drops for infections and dry eye. Then the business end: insurance authorizations, notes, and a talk with the optical staff about a difficult prescription.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry counts 25 schools and colleges of optometry in the United States, plus two in Canada. Several states have none at all, which is why so many students move across the country for the degree.
The back of the eye is the only place in the body where blood vessels and nerve tissue can be seen directly without cutting anything. Optometrists regularly spot the first signs of diabetes, high blood pressure and brain tumors in people who came in for new glasses.
Scope of practice is decided state by state and keeps expanding. Optometrists everywhere prescribe glasses, contacts and eye medications, and a growing number of states, beginning with Oklahoma, allow certain laser procedures as well. Ophthalmologists fight each expansion, which is why this is a political career as well as a clinical one.
The National Eye Institute expects the number of people in the United States with visual impairment or blindness to double by 2050. Federal projections separately expect optometrist jobs to grow much faster than average from 2025 to 2035.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Dental and eye care first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
Tell us about this page. A person reads every message.
No email app on this device? Use Gmail instead: report a mistake in Gmail or say what you like in Gmail.