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Is it difficult to get into optometry (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter DMOS
- Start date
Dr_Fresh
U MAD??
no
medicine
dentistry
optometry
physio
pharm
that's the order of difficulty for the allied health sci imo (going on historical cutoffs/competition). big jump from dent->optom and optom->physio/pharm. so optom is right in the middle.i'd say optom is relatively easy to get into providing u don't choke on the umat or totally fuck up ur atar.
dentistry
optometry
physio
pharm
that's the order of difficulty for the allied health sci imo (going on historical cutoffs/competition). big jump from dent->optom and optom->physio/pharm. so optom is right in the middle.i'd say optom is relatively easy to get into providing u don't choke on the umat or totally fuck up ur atar.
Dr_Fresh
U MAD??
i think the jump from physio to pharm would be greater. i would say physio is on par with optometry.
mmmm ur probably right there. now that i think about it there is quite a large jump between physio/pharm. but i'm not sure if physio is on par with optometry. all optom courses req umat but there are a few physio courses out there which don't even need it. plus optom usually requires at least 96ish atar. i'm only really familiar with med/dent though so don't quote me on this.
pharm is really very easy to get into these days. if u really want pharm u can go to charles darwin university and get in with ~80 atar.
Just a question in regard to this, what is the Umat out of then if you need 160?
the raw score is not out of anything.
195 will get you 98-99 percentile i think. you need much higher for 100 percentile (e.g. a friend of mine got 200 last year and got 99 percentile i believe?) 99 percentile is a very wide raw mark range in the umat.
supercalamari
you've got the love
Is UNSW the only uni that offers Optometry?
i think there is also flinders uni in SA.
there is a post grad course at melbourne as well. but yeah, i'm pretty sure there's only 2 "undergrad" schools. i put undergrad in quotes there because technically flinders is grad entry, except you are guaranteed entry into the grad optom program providing you can maintain a 5.0 GPA in medical science (in vision science) which is relatively easy. i'm fairly sure flinders will be slightly easier to get into than UNSW, seeing as how it is a brand new course and the uni is less established. but honestly prestige does not matter when it comes to the health sciences.
hope that helped.
jules.09
Member
- Joined
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- 360
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- HSC
- 2009
Really? I just had a friend in my year miss out on Optometry '10; she got an ATAR of 97 and an '09 umat score of 160 i believe... I think they said the cut off was 98.xx in '10 at the welcome too.
do you know the difference in salary if establishing private practice? thats what Im afraid of, completing my degree than loathing the job it gets me... better be rewarding.
Once u graduate, your starting salary tends to be around $45K to $50K in some places. Max is about 90 to 100k. The Best benefits u'll get after u graduate is a $1000-$1500 limit on buying any glasses/lens every year as u work at say opsm. Other than that, salary's shit, job's just real boring.
Problem with establishing your own practice is that just like pharmacists, it costs heaps of money to start the business up (Just rent alone, you're looking at $3000-$4000 every 2 weeks). Recently, there's also been so many private entrepreneurs starting opto shops and getting optometrists in.