UC Berkeley School of Optometry
Why Optometry?
Vision is one of our most valuable senses. As an optometrist, you will make a profound and lasting impact on the lives of your patients. Doctors of optometry do more than care for a person’s eyes—they improve a person’s quality of life.
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What Optometrists Do
Optometrists play a vital role in eye care. They are health care professionals licensed by the state to:
- Perform comprehensive eye exams
- Detect and manage eye diseases and disorders of the visual system
- Prescribe vision therapy and rehabilitation for conditions affecting the eye, such as eye-movement or eye-tracking problems
- Treat traumatic eye injuries
- Provide prescriptions for glasses and contacts
- And much more…
Job Satisfaction
Our alumni report that helping people see better — whether it is by detecting and successfully treating serious eye diseases or correcting vision with glasses or contacts — is among the most rewarding experience of their lives. The flexibility to work either full-time or part-time allows optometrists to achieve a work-life balance that is rarely matched in other professional careers.
Earning Power
Optometrists earn competitive salaries. The information in the graph below represents average salaries for three different types of optometry jobs: 1) Private practice owners; 2) ODs working in corporate settings (Costco, Lenscrafters, etc.); and 3) ODs working as employees in a private practice.
