Experiences
Overview
In this section, you can enter your professional experiences in several categories, or types. Review the type definitions below, consider the duties you performed during the experience, and use your best judgment to determine which category your experience falls into. If you have any questions about your experiences fulfilling an individual program's requirements, inquire with that program directly.
Although you can enter any experiences that you believe are relevant to your application, we recommend focusing on those experiences within the last 10 years and at the collegiate level and above. Enter only current and in-progress experiences, and check your program's requirements regarding documentation.
Experience Types
Employment
All paid work done outside of the optometry field; for example, a retail or restaurant job.
Extracurricular Activities
Related activities you would like your selected programs to review; for example, non-optometric academic clubs and competitive teams. Do not include paid work experience in this section.
Optometric Experience
All paid and unpaid optometric work experience with the exception of shadowing/observation and volunteer experiences.
Shadowing
Time spent officially following and observing a health care professional at work, preferably in the optometry field.
Volunteer
All volunteer work; for example, working for Habitat for Humanity, tutoring students, participating in or working for a fundraiser walk or blood drive, etc.
Enter Your Experience
- Click Add an Experience.
- Select the appropriate experience type from the drop-down.
- Enter information about the organization where the experience took place.
- Enter information about your supervisor at the organization. This is a person that programs can contact to verify that this experience occurred. If the experience was a student-organized group and there was no advisor, list a member who can verify your experience.
- Enter the date or date range in which the experience took place. Note that your experiences will not display on your application in any specific order, regardless of the dates entered.
- Enter additional details about the experience, including the title of the experience and the time commitments. Enter the average weekly number of hours that you completed for this experience during the date range that you indicated.
- Select Yes or No to indicate a release authorization to allow your selected programs to contact the organization.
- Click Save & Continue.
Note that you cannot repeat hours between Experience types. So, if position duties encompass more than one section, enter the position in both sections and divide the hours and duties accordingly.