Meeting Minutes 10/25/2018

This was our third meeting of the year and Mr. Zach Levin-Epstein from SUNY College of Optometry in New York City was able to come in and give a presentation to us about Optometry School and to answer any questions we had. Thank you for coming to speak with us Zach!

Here is some of the information he was able to give us:

  • Events SUNY has / opportunities to visit
    • Open Houses- 2 per year (usually January and July)
      • Student / faculty panels, tours, admissions presentation
    • Admissions Bootcamp- talk about application process
    • Tour Tuesdays- tour with current student, meet with Admissions Counselor
    • Directly contact admissions department to schedule visit
  • Midtown NYC location- 1 tall building, 18 floors
  • University Eye Center
    • High volume of patients- 70,000 per year
    • Highly diverse patient base
    • Students see ~2,000 patients over 4 years
    • 21 specialty areas (sports vision, vision therapy, glaucoma, retina, etc)
      • Wide range of externships (60- including abroad)
  • Curriculum
    • Blue coats- didactic portion
      • 1st year shadowing, 2nd year scribing (full eye exam by end of 2nd year)
    • White coats- end of 2nd year
    • 3rd year rotations
      • 1 at SUNY
  • Boards passage rate- consistently higher than national average
  • 100 students per class
    • Summer flex program before 2nd year to lighten load in 2nd year
    • Super-tech
  • OD/MS, OD/PhD, PhD, Residency/MS, OD/MBA
    • No extra cost or time
  • 1:4 Faculty:Student ratio
  • Career Development Center- paired with SUNY alumn
  • International service trips- SVOSH, Lions Club
  • Cost- $50,000 out of state, $29,000 in state
    • Can be eligible for in-state tuition after 1 year
    • Scholarships- need based, performance, application, top performers each year
  • Application process- stand out (purple cow)
    • C or better in pre-reqs, online classes need to be approved, accept AP credit
    • Strong GPA and OAT averages (aim for 320 and 3.3)
    • Letters of Rec- one from optometrist, 2 from science professors (TA is professor signs off on it, professor you did research with, work supervisor if science related)
    • 3 shadowing experiences (work can be listed as shadowing)
      • Documenting- letter from experience, keep a log

Again, thank you for coming to speak with us and for sharing all of this information about SUNY!