2025 Best Optometry Schools in the Southeast Region
3Colleges in the Southeast Region
339Optometry Degrees Awarded
$102,063Avg Early-Career Salary
When it comes to popularity, optometry sits in the middle of the road, ranking #194 out of 395 majors in the country. So, you may have to do some digging around to find quality schools that offer the degree program. This list can help with that.
College Factual looked at 3 colleges and universities when compiling its 2025 Best Optometry Schools in the Southeast Region ranking. Combined, these schools handed out 339 degrees in optometry to qualified students.
Your choice of optometry school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for optometry schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
You may want to choose one of the degree levels below to find the schools of most interest to you.
Since picking the right college can be one of the most important decisions of your life, we've developed the Best Optometry Schools in the Southeast Region ranking, along with many other major-related rankings, to help you make that decision.
More interested in schools in a specific area of the country? Filter this list by region or state.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
Best Schools for Optometry in the Southeast Region
If you aren't interested in a particular degree level and want to know which schools are the overall best at delivering an education for the optometry degrees they offer, see the list below.
Nova Southeastern University is a wonderful option for students pursuing a degree in optometry. NUS Florida is a very large private not-for-profit university located in the suburb of Fort Lauderdale. A Best Colleges rank of #263 out of 2,152 colleges nationwide means NUS Florida is a great university overall.
There were approximately 95 optometry students who graduated with this degree at NUS Florida in the most recent year we have data available. Students who receive their degree from the optometry program earn around $88,293 in their early career salary.
It is hard to beat University of Alabama at Birmingham if you want to pursue a degree in optometry. Located in the medium-sized city of Birmingham, UAB is a public university with a very large student population. This university ranks 4th out of 42 schools for overall quality in the state of Alabama.
There were approximately 41 optometry students who graduated with this degree at UAB in the most recent year we have data available. Students who graduate with their degree from the optometry program report average early career earnings of $97,611.
Any student who is interested in optometry needs to take a look at University of Pikeville. Located in the town of Pikeville, UPIKE is a private not-for-profit university with a small student population. This university ranks 28th out of 39 colleges for overall quality in the state of Kentucky.
There were roughly 79 optometry students who graduated with this degree at UPIKE in the most recent data year.
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).
Your choice of optometry school matters, so we have put together these rankings to help you make your decision. In order to come up with a best overall ranking for optometry schools, we combine our degree-level rankings, weighting them by the number of degrees awarded at each level.
