2025 Best Optometry Schools in the Southeast Region
3Colleges in the Southeast Region
339Optometry Degrees Awarded
A degree in optometry is more popular than many other degrees. In fact, it ranks #302 out of 1506 on popularity of all such degrees in the nation. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 3 schools in the Southeast Region to determine which ones were the best for optometry students pursuing a degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 339 degrees in optometry annually.
The optometry program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Optometry rankings. 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.
In order to find the schools that are the best fit for you, you may want to filter to one of the degree levels below.
The optometry school you choose to invest your time and money in matters. To help you make the decision that is right for you, we've developed a number of major-specific rankings, including this list of the Best Optometry Schools in the Southeast Region.
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 one of the finest schools in the United States for getting a degree in optometry. Located in the large suburb of Fort Lauderdale, NUS Florida is a private not-for-profit university with a fairly large student population. A Best Colleges rank of #263 out of 2,152 schools nationwide means NUS Florida is a great university overall.
There were about 95 optometry students who graduated with this degree at NUS Florida in the most recent year we have data available.
Every student who is interested in optometry needs to check out University of Alabama at Birmingham. UAB is a fairly large public university located in the city of Birmingham. This university ranks 4th out of 42 schools for overall quality in the state of Alabama.
There were roughly 41 optometry students who graduated with this degree at UAB in the most recent data year.
University of Pikeville is a wonderful decision for students interested in a degree in optometry. UPIKE is a small private not-for-profit university located in the town of Pikeville. This university ranks 28th out of 39 schools 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.
Optometry is one of 0 different types of Optometry programs to choose from.
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).
The optometry program you select can have a big impact on your future. That's why we developed our collection of Best Schools for Optometry rankings. 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.
