Test eyes, catch disease early, prescribe glasses, contacts and medication. A four-year doctorate, no surgical residency, and clinics in every town.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$136,570
New graduate
$74,870
Top tenth
$202,180
The national median is $136,570 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $74,870. Employed optometrists in retail chains and clinics sit around the middle. Practice owners are at the top, and they are earning from the frames and lenses as well as from the exams.
$110,000 to $130,000
New graduate in a retail chain, clinic or group practice
This is one of the highest starting salaries on this site, and it arrives seven or eight years after high school with no residency required. It is also arriving alongside a very large loan balance.
$200,000 and above
Partners and owners of private optometry practices
The jump from employee to owner is the biggest single pay change in this career. It also makes you a small business owner with rent, staff, inventory and insurance billing to run.
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 dollars a year for four years. The high end is four full years of undergraduate study at 16,000 dollars a year plus an optometry school nearer 55,000 dollars a year. Both include 1,000 to 2,500 dollars for the optometry admission test and applications, and several thousand more across the three parts of the national board examinations and the state licence. Graduate students cannot get a Pell Grant, so this is borrowed money, and 180,000 to 250,000 dollars of federal loans is common, though work at a veterans hospital, a community health center or a public clinic can have the balance cancelled after ten years of payments.
Graduating with $180,000 to $250,000 of federal student loans is common. 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 highest earnings and the most control, and you own the business risk.
Retail optical chains
A steady salary, patients supplied, and no business to run. Where most 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
One of the largest federal employers 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. Lower pay, and 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 and Puerto Rico 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 the fastest growing part.
Specialty contact lenses
Fitting scleral and custom lenses for damaged or misshapen corneas. Highly skilled and well paid.
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 practising 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 as the population ages. That is the engine behind the strong hiring outlook for everyone in eye care.
Last checked September 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.