University selection - first post

On Thursday we spoke with representatives from 30 national universities from all over Japan. Although invitations were sent out to all 86 national universities nationwide, clearly not all of them bothered to come all the way to TUFS. Tokyo University was one such university - clearly because it's too far for them to commute from the other part of Tokyo to here, when even Hokkaido university sent one representative (and he was very passionate about his university). Why did invitations only go out to the national universities of Japan? Because in our program, we are only allowed to apply for entrance into a national level university. Makes sense - after all, our study is completely funded by the Japanese government.

First we listened to a 5 minute presentation from each university, which gave us a general overview of what courses they offered, how many students and teaching staff they have, the cost of living in that area, the university's unique characteristics, and so on. Most of them make almost desperate-sounding pleas for us to go study there. It sounds like they didn't receive much of an intake from previous years. Sheds some light on why Tokyo U didn't think it necessary to send anyone.

Next, the university representatives went to classrooms and set up stalls, and an hour long "personal consultation session" was held. In this time, we were allowed to visit any university's stall to ask questions individually (or in groups). However, there were at most three representatives from any given university so the more popular ones inevitably had long queues. The only downside to this part of the schedule, was that it was not enough time! To be honest though no matter how long they make this session there will always be someone who wanted to ask more questions, or visit more stalls, so understandably they had to make a realistic call on the time limit.

Many 'souvenirs' from the respective university stalls we visited

I had time to visit four universities' stalls: Chiba, Hitotsubashi, Yokohama, and Tsukuba. From just the course availability and relevant point of view, only Tsukuba remained a viable option for me as someone looking to study an education-related course. The others either required me to specify whether I was interested in primary/secondary/tertiary/special education, or simply didn't have an education department. Tsukuba, on the other hand, offers a more customisable set of subjects that don't appear to be limited to one specific educational category, such as educational philosophy, educational sociology, and curriculum design. Not only is Tsukuba's course design appealing, but also their accommodation choice. Most university dormitories in Japan either limit their occupants to one year of residency before forcing them to find their own, or is impractically far from uni (e.g. 30 minute train ride), or both. But Tsukuba, very peculiarly, not only has 4000 dormitory spots, but (maybe because of that fact) allows students to remain for the entirety of their degree. They made it clear, though, that that policy has merely remained such up until now, and is subject to change in future.

I want to find a university in Tokyo for next year, because I want to find a job teaching English while I study, and the city connecting Japan to the rest of the world undoubtedly offer the best incentives for doing so. That helps me narrow down my choices, and it leaves me with two other universities to check out before I can decide what order to submit my preferences in - Tokyo Gakugei University, and of course, Tokyo U. They didn't come on Thursday and didn't send any information packs either so I'll have to go to them.