New England College of Optometry Reviews

"Overall the preceptors and teachers are very dedicated and approachable. However I feel the problems with the school stem from the leadership and admin teams. Unfortunately a lot of times the school puts profits over the wellbeing of students. In my first year of school there were not enough seats in the lecture theatre for the enrolled students because they enrolled too many students. Their solution was to cull the bottom students at the end of first year instead of expanding their facilities. Admin staff were disorganized and often left students off schedules. During COVID, for certain classes, instead of holding live zoom lectures they delivered the material via recordings which were 5 years old while also increasing tuition. They had COVID outbreaks within the student community at school and instead of being transparent they tried to hide this from the student community, risking the health and safety of students. Students in the past have been told they were not allowed to take days off to take mandatory NBEO boards examinations while at inhouse clinical rotations. Benefits of the school were that it did well prepare us for rotations and our clinical training."

"The New England College of Optometry prepared me well as a future optometrist when it came to the curriculum. However, it is the most expensive optometry school, and while the curriculum was worth it, the experience was not. When you decide to pay $40 grand to an institution, you expect that certain costs will be covered, such as licensing exams, certain equipment required, or even a decent school cafeteria. However, after four years spent at the school, I still cannot fathom where all of our tuition fees really went. I hope for the sake of future students that the school adds more incentives to balance their high price. There is also an extreme lack of diversity, so I hope that more ethnic students are accepted in the future."