This may come as a surprise to some of you: most schools do not require a bachelors degree. Most list it as preferred on their websites, but few of them actually have it as a requirement. If you are a strong enough applicant, I would suggest thinking about saving some time with your life and trying to get into schools without an undergraduate graduation plan lined up. However, the best route for most applicants is to plan on graduating before attending optometry school.

You can and should plan on applying to optometry school before you graduate college. Most students apply and get accepted during their senior year of college. When you are accepted, it is on the assumption of completing any outstanding pre-reqs and receiving your degree, depending on where and when you apply.

Your major is not likely to help you in the long run, but does have a big impact on the types of classes you take, and therefore a big impact on your GPA. Please choose a major that is interesting to you, not unnecessarily difficult, and ideally has significant overlap with optometry prerequisites.

My first major was Bio-Physics: Unnecessarily difficult, but pretty interesting and had great overlap with optometry. But it was unbelievably hard and did not align with my future goals hardly at all.

My second major was Spanish: Personally very easy and interesting, but had no overlap with optometry at all. This would have taken me an extra year to graduate and complete optometry pre-requisites.

I ended up with a microbiology major: Plenty of overlap, one of the least strenuous majors, and decently interesting. Find a major that will be somewhere in the middle and not create any headaches for your GPA or graduation timeline.

Optometry school admissions teams do look at your major... but it has little to nothing to do with their decision on whether or not they accept you. The most helpful I have seen it be is a fun talking point in your interview. So rest assured, you should have the same advantage as anyone else with whichever major you choose.