BSc Optometry / Careers

Year of entry: 2023

Career opportunities

BSc Optometry - Amelia White

"The Optometry course at Manchester helped me to become the best optometrist I can be.

"The curriculum is vast with lots to learn, and there is also an art to providing great patient care, so you will need to develop the necessary communication skills, which will come with support and experience."

Amelia White / BSc Optometry graduate and Optometrist

Optometrists work in high street practice or hospital eye clinics, where they prescribe and dispense spectacles and contact lenses, provide low vision rehabilitation, treat problems with binocular vision, and monitor ocular disease.

Optometrists are now also involved in the primary care of patients with diseases such as diabetes and glaucoma and can also undertake postgraduate study become independent prescribers with the authority to treat a range of eye conditions.  

Most BSc Optometry graduates are successful and go straight on to do their pre-registration year and take the College of Optometrists' Scheme for Registration examinations, which, when successfully completed, allow entry to the General Optical Council register.

Alternatively, during your second year you can apply for a place on our undergraduate four-year Master of Science in Optometry (MSci) degree, on completion of which you can register directly with the General Optical Council. This opportunity is unique to The University of Manchester.

After registration with the General Optical Council you can take your career forward in private practice or within the National Health Service. Of our recent graduates, 95% are working in private practice and 5% in the NHS.

See a blog post from one of our graduates who is now working as an optometrist on the Biology, Medicine and Health Student Blog.

Accrediting organisations

Optometry degrees are approved by the General Optical Council.

In order to be eligible for progress to the pre-registration year you need to achieve a 2:2, demonstrate all of the GOC stage 1 core competencies and maintain GOC student registration throughout your studies.