Sophia FLA, Waseda SILS, or ICU

I was wondering if anyone could comment on the following colleges.

I got into Sophia University's FLA program, and I just found out that I got into the International Christian University (ICU). I am waiting to here from Waseda's SILS program though.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight on these schools, and maybe which ones I should choose. I am visiting Tokyo in early April of this year, so I can visit all three schools. Any information or experiences would be really helpful.

I won't comment on which school is the best for fear that others may be offended.

My father went to Waseda. He liked it. He was one of the few foreigner 70 years ago.

My sister went to Sophia. She liked it and she became a Roman Catholic.

Nobody of my family went to ICU and but ICU has around for over 40+ years helping foreign students.

In terms at location, I like Sophia in Yotsuya. Nice area!

ICU is a little bit outside of central Tokyo.

Waseda is the oldest and really established.

I know I will get some heated objections to my comments so I end here.

Chad

Sorry for my typo errors in the above post.

It shows either I'm careless or I'm lacking in education.

Chad

I think it depends on your interests. If you want have a many international freiends, ICU and Sophia are good because they have many foreign students. I visit to ICU long time ago, it located in good area little bit far from center city. Sophia and Waseda locates in metropolitan area. I think Waseda is most famous for school reputation. (Some may disagree though. But I live in local city in Japan, still I heard the name)

Any other opinions?

i went to sophia about 5 years ago. i had a great time. location is excellent...although when i was there, they had 2 campuses... yotsuya and ichigaya. i was at the ichigaya campus but went over to yotsuya a few times. its a nice area.

i hear that waseda is a great school...at the very least its quite well known. but there's not much else i know about it. sorry.

You can find some student perspectives on Waseda at http://www.sodai.org

Hello Folks,
We have closed the Ichigaya Campus some year ago, so now everyone is on the Yotsuya Campus. You can belong to clubs (which is very important) at any of the schools, so you should check out the courses each offer before you decide. I think that Sophia has the most English-language courses, but I have not checked out the others in a while. Have a great time wherever you go--all great places!

I am at Sophia FLA right now. What course of study are you looking at? I absolutely love the campus and location, and campus life is very nice. The course offerings seem to largely be biased toward international relations / business, religious studies (though not exclusively
Catholicism), and art. Language courses are obviously offered as well. If any of those areas interest you, I would think you would very much enjoy Sophia, though certainly the other universities are top notch as well.

I'm actually a grad student at GSAPS in Waseda. To be honest, it totally depends on what your interests are. Sophia, Waseda, and ICU are all top level private universities in Japan anyway. These three schools are trying to increase the number of international students as well as English courses. If you compare the number of international students, Waseda has the biggest number in Japan cause they have about more than 3,000 foreign students. Sophia and ICU are also trying to do the same thing. They both are really nice school though. Among Japanese private universities, Waseda and Keio have been traditionally regarded as the most prestigious schools. Then, Sophia has been always said to be as the same level as both Waseda and Keio. I think ICU is pretty much the same as those three, but they are kinda new school compared with Waseda, Keio, and Sophia. So what I can recommend is that compare each program. Then, try to figure out which makes you really interested.

I know nothing about ICU other than one of the princesses is there...

I know people at Sophia doing the graduate masters who have been to Waseda and like Sophia better. The main reason they gave was that Waseda marks everything on a bell curve & profs actually have told students that cooperating with classmates jeopardises their own mark. Please confirm that else where - I am not sure if it is a university wide policy. It would be a strong reason for me not to want to go there.

The main complaint I hear about Sophia is that the Japanese Dept. is very very rigid. Classes for Advanced Japanese will clash with classes in the Masters and there is no flexibility - you can't take the Japanese course. Also Japanese counts to GPA scores but not to masters units. From what I hear the Masters Program staff and admin are great, but the Japanese dept. create obstacles to study - they will not accommodate timetable or work clashes.

Again, please check to verify.

I was an FLA student at Sophia a year ago. I can say the quality of their education is good but not as challenging as I was expecting. Campus life is one of the best, thousands of clubs to join and many foreigners as well as japanese students fluent in english. It is also true that now both foreign and japanese students attend the Yotsuya campus which makes it much more fun.

However, girltokyo is totally right about the japanese classes. They are usually given in the mornings, with no many options to chose from. Many times you'll find the japanese classes overlapping with some other courses you might be interested in taking which is really really unfortunate.

Nonetheless, Sophia remains one of the best options out there.