Sophia University

Hello!!!! I'm looking into attending Sophia University next spring, but I have some questions for people who may be able to help! I'm going to community college this summer and winter, and applying for the spring semester, are transfers like this possible? Do I have to attend for a full year before being able to transfer? Also, since i don't speak much Japanese (but I will be taking classes in CC, and I just bought Rosetta Stone) I will be in The Faculty of Liberal Arts correct? Is this on a different campus? What is the difference between this program and the Japanese one? What are some things I could do In CC to stand out from the rest of the students who are applying (I read that only about 60 students get into the spring program), and I haven't done much in high school to really stand out. And do they look at your college GPA? I'll admit I wasn't the best high school student (except for this year, where I have a 3.8 GPA for both semesters) but I hope to get as close to a 4.0 as possible in CC.

THANK YOU SO MUCH
Please, any help will be much appreciated!
-Kat

Hello Kat. ^_^ Seems we are in something of a similar situation. I think some of my the information I've found will help you out.

Sophia seems to only think of Seniors and Juniors as transfer students. So unless you already have two years of college completed then you will be entering as a Freshman with credits to transfer. They were not clear with me on the ability to transfer credits from a community college or if I would be able to transfer credits from college courses I took while in high school. They did state that they would only accept credits accrued as a full time student. I'll have to write them again to get them to elaborate on that a bit more. Looks like 29 credits gone for me. At least my high school paid for those. :)

While they do accept 60 students in the Spring and 70 in the Fall there are nearly a hundred accepted for each out of roughly 150 applicants. They said that has been the pattern for the past few years. I've also heard on this site that Sophia is sometimes erratic on choosing the student body. Something about the exotic over the academic.

When I asked about SAT and grades they told me that they are prefer 430 VERB and 510 MATH, but this is because a lot of students don't speak English and have more difficulty with the SAT. They followed up with:

''For native speakers of English, more consideration will be placed on grades, recommendation letters and the application essay.''

So practice your writing skills and chumming up to your instructors. I think the essay may be the greatest moment you get to shine.

Yes, you will be in the FLA. They did have another program, but I forget the name of it at the moment. The old program was based at another campus, Ichigoya I think, but with the overhaul they have centralized everything.

A couple other things...

Someone might want to correct me if I'm wrong. But I've figured the cost to be up to about 23k USD for an academic year. This is with tuition, fees, books, housing, and personal expenses.

BTW, if you have a hard time with Rosetta Stone, then hit up the Genki books. After the first few chapters it makes Rosetta Stone much easier to learn with. Then again, I suck at languages and this is just from my personal experience.

I hope that helps and good luck. ^_^

dont worry much about your japanese ability, everybody at FLA speaks fluent english and as you probably know, classes are held all in english.

as for SAT, if you have 430 on verbal and 510 for math, you would not be able to get in. if you are a native english speaker, you must do much better on verbal part. Japanese students tend to get really high score on math (because SAT math is a joke) but it is hard for them to get good score on verbal. but i think most people who got in had at least 1100 in total or so.

good luck.

if you need good grades there, then choose your classes carefully. You'll usually get A but there are exceptions such as Prof. Okada where it is harder to get an A. However his classes are interesting and up-to-date... but most Japanese students are also sleeping in this class :) Ifrastructure is excellent on the yotsuya campus and the library is top too. So... good luck!