2025 Best Optometry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region

If you pursue a doctor's degree in optometry, you won't be alone. The field of study is the #15 most popular program in the country. This makes choosing the right school a hard decision.

College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Optometry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region ranking. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 235 doctor's degrees in optometry during the 2022-2023 academic year.

Jump to one of the following sections: * Our Methodology

• Best Doctor’s Degree Schools List

Choosing a Great Optometry School for Your Doctor's Degree

Your choice of optometry for getting your doctor's degree school matters. Important measures of a quality optometry program can vary widely even among the top schools. When choosing a school we recommend considering some of the following factors:

Quality Overall Is Important

The overall quality of a doctor's degree school is important to ensure a quality education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To make it into this list a school must rank well in our overall Best Colleges for a Doctor's Degree ranking. This ranking considered factors such as graduation rates, overall graduate earnings and other educational resources to identify great colleges and universities.

Average Earnings

To determine the overall quality of a graduate school, one factor we look at is the average early-career salary of those receiving their doctor's degree from the school. After all, your doctor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.

Other Factors We Consider

In addition to the above, you should consider some of the following factors:

• Major Focus - How much a school focuses on optometry students vs. other majors.
• Major Demand - How many other optometry students want to attend this school to pursue a doctor's degree.
• Educational Resources - The amount of money and other resources allocated to students while they are pursuing their degree. These resources include such things as number of students per instructor and education expenditures per student.
• Student Debt - How easy is it for optometry to pay back their student loans after receiving their doctor's degree.
• Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized optometry related body.

Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for optometry students working on their doctor's degree.

More Ways to Rank Optometry Schools

When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Optometry Doctor's Degree Schools in the Southwest Region list to help you make the college decision.

Best Schools for Doctorate Students to Study Optometry in the Southwest Region

The following list ranks the best colleges and universities for pursuing a doctor's degree in optometry.

Top Southwest Region Schools for a Doctorate in Optometry

1

University of Houston
Houston, TX

92 Annual Graduates

Any student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in optometry has to take a look at University of Houston. Located in the large city of Houston, UH is a public university with a fairly large student population.More information about a doctorate in optometry from University of Houston

2

University of the Incarnate Word
San Antonio, TX

62 Annual Graduates

Any student pursuing a degree in a doctor's degree in optometry needs to check out University of the Incarnate Word. Located in the large city of San Antonio, UIW is a private not-for-profit university with a medium-sized student population.More information about a doctorate in optometry from University of the Incarnate Word

3

Northeastern State University
Tahlequah, OK

27 Annual Graduates

Any student who is interested in a doctor's degree in optometry has to take a look at Northeastern State University. Located in the town of Tahlequah, NSU is a public university with a medium-sized student population.More information about a doctorate in optometry from Northeastern State University

Best Optometry Colleges by State

Explore the best optometry colleges for a specific state in the Southwest Region .

State	Colleges	Degrees Awarded
Texas	165	169
Arizona	119	50
Oklahoma	92	28

View All Rankings >

Rankings in Majors Related to Optometry

Optometry is one of 34 different types of Health Professions programs to choose from.

Optometry Focus Areas

Major	Annual Graduates
Optometry	235

Majors Similar to Optometry

Related Major	Annual Graduates
Medicine	2,874
Nursing	1,594
Rehabilitation & Therapeutic Professions	1,545
Pharmacy/Pharmaceutical Sciences	1,294
Dentistry	535
Chiropractic	396
Alternative Medicine & Systems	116
Communication Sciences	101
Public Health	85
Health & Medical Administrative Services	29

Notes and References

• The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
• The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
• Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard). More about our data sources and methodologies.