Hi guys, kinda nervous to be positing on here but i really need some advice.
I'm currently a 4th year Canadian student studying in a science background and I've only recently realized I wanted to pursue optometry so I'm a bit behind compared to most pre-opt people. I had a bit of a difficult first few years of undergrad making my cgpa drop really low (like a 2.3.. ) before I realized I wanted to try optometry so I've worked on raising my grades for the past year and am now currently at a cgpa of 3.2ish. I'm hoping to take an extra year to fix some of my prereq grades and to graduate and hope to be around a 3.4 by graduation. I'm also hoping to study for the OAT this summer so I can hopefully (?) apply for the upcoming cycle.
As for extracurriculars, I only really joined one ethnic/Science club of which I'm co-president, and other than that only have some annual volunteer experience and one job experience (Starbucks). Because I'm late to the party, I only have ~10 hours of shadowing experience as well. Another thing is that I was never really the type to visit profs at office hours, so I kinda feel lost in how to go about asking for letters of rec.
I know that was a long intro but my questions are:
- what are my chances at applying to NECO, MCPHS, Western, ICO next cycle?
- how should I go about asking for letters of rec?
- what kind of scores on the OAT should I need to have a chance?
- any suggestions for getting extracurriculars/shadowing hours during COVID?
Thanks so much everyone :')
I'm currently a 4th year Canadian student studying in a science background and I've only recently realized I wanted to pursue optometry so I'm a bit behind compared to most pre-opt people. I had a bit of a difficult first few years of undergrad making my cgpa drop really low (like a 2.3.. ) before I realized I wanted to try optometry so I've worked on raising my grades for the past year and am now currently at a cgpa of 3.2ish. I'm hoping to take an extra year to fix some of my prereq grades and to graduate and hope to be around a 3.4 by graduation. I'm also hoping to study for the OAT this summer so I can hopefully (?) apply for the upcoming cycle.
As for extracurriculars, I only really joined one ethnic/Science club of which I'm co-president, and other than that only have some annual volunteer experience and one job experience (Starbucks). Because I'm late to the party, I only have ~10 hours of shadowing experience as well. Another thing is that I was never really the type to visit profs at office hours, so I kinda feel lost in how to go about asking for letters of rec.
I know that was a long intro but my questions are:
- what are my chances at applying to NECO, MCPHS, Western, ICO next cycle?
- how should I go about asking for letters of rec?
- what kind of scores on the OAT should I need to have a chance?
- any suggestions for getting extracurriculars/shadowing hours during COVID?
Thanks so much everyone :')