Meeting Minutes 11/27/2018

This week Lucas Christiani was able to talk with us about Western University College of Optometry which is in Pomona, California. We really enjoyed listening to him talk about Western University College of Optometry, thank you Lucas!

Lucas explained to us that Western University College of Optometry was founded in 2009 and has 9 colleges of Health Sciences! There they place a lot of value on humanism which they define as treating people like humans first, patients second. Also on campus they have 130 student clubs and the campus is in Southern California right next to Los Angeles. They have many options for housing including The Daumier and they encourage students to join Facebook groups to find housing opportunities. Some unique aspects included Neuro-optometric rehabilitation, Vision screenings in first year, and Clerkships in second semester of first year which are kind of a middle ground between shadowing and being out on your own in 3rd/4th years. 

At Western University College of Optometry they value Interprofessional Education. In this they have representatives from each professional programs work in small groups on different case studies, and they have a shared general science courses with certain programs. There are many other positives to attending Western University College of Optometry such as state of the art technology, an emphasis on rehabilitation such as low vision rehab, vision therapy, and neuro-optometric rehabilitation. One important person that they are closely associated with is Jacob Green who had a TBI and was greatly impacted by this event, and the Optometrists at Western University College of Optometry are working closely with him.

Some other information about attending this school includes what occurs during your time there. During the first and second year you participate in Didactic style. During your 3rd year you participate in Primary Care / Rehabilitation & Special Care Services. Then during your final and 4th year you are in off campus clinical locations. 

As far as admissions go, we learned that they have 705 applications, interview 242 people, and enroll 86 of those. They are now accepting DAT and the GRE. They also have closed file review for interviews. Their tuition is $38,510 as they are a private non-profit institution.

If you are interested in visiting them they do have a WesternU Preview Day on March 9th, 2019.

Again, thank you to Lucas Christiani for speaking with us and for sharing all of this information!