College in Japan as a Regular Student

To begin with: The last guy who posted a similar question got the expected ''Hey, slow down, think'' response... I already understand thoroughly that this is a very huge life decision and as such I'm taking my sweet time to think about this. For those that need to know, yes I'm willing to abandon family and friends in the US for reason x, y, and z. (marriages, deaths, blah blah blah, can I please skip past this lecture I've read it 5 other times somewhere else). Thanks for your cooperation...

Currently I'm a high school exchange student in Japan... obviously attending high school. The only thing I need to graduate from my US high school is one year's worth of English which should be able to transfer (if not, its not the end of the world if I become a super senior... that extra year might happen anyways due to the different timings of Japanese and US school systems...). Moving along, as far as my Japanese goes, I started my exchange year last month with about a lower intermediate level of Japanese. It is my hope to be fluent by the end of the year, but if I'm not, I've been self-teaching myself for two year why would I quit now? As for Kanji... I love to study it anyways, so its just a matter of time, I'm pretty confident that I can pass the JLPT 4 (N5) a little less confident on the 3 (N4) doubtful in terms of 2.5 (N3) and above. Again can certainly change by the end of this year...(I've still got about the other 11 months of my exchange to go so there's a lot of time for improvement, way out here in Rokkasho, Aomori.)

I'm looking to get into IT, more specifically Computer Systems Administration. That or the technical term for a person who designs circuitry for a business (took a course in my US high school for that, it was epic).

It would be greatly appreciated if you could provide me with the following:

-What are the requirements for a student visa? Also how often do I have to renew?

-What kind of tests/testing do I have to take? As for the Japanese college entrance exam, since I'm a foreigner applying is it any more or less difficult than that which the Japanese take?

-How much do Japanese businesses care about where my degree came from (aka US vs. Japan)? This question is asked with the implication that I have no interest in working in the US and as such do not care what US businesses would think...

-Any other important information (other than a STOP, SLOW DOWN, THINK speech)

Thank you for your time and effort!

Derek

Well, I can't give you much advice about how the Japanese student visa works since I don't go to college in Japan. However, I'm currently a senior Comp. Sci. major at an American university looking to do something similar to System Administration, so here's my advice to you:

-College Entrance Exams: Most colleges have their own entrance exams that you have to take. Thus, unlike the SAT in the US, you'll need to take an exam for each college you apply to. This includes having to pay for testing fees, etc. Also, I'm not sure whether you have to take the exam at a place designated by the college, so you'll need to check that.

-Japanese business thoughts on degree location: From my personal experience (and that of some of my friends), most Japanese businesses won't care where you get your degree from as long as a) it's from an accredited university and b) you have the skills and experience necessary to excel at your job. That being said, in your (and my) field of interest, having an IT-related degree from a university in the US is an advantage over having one from Japan. Why? Think about the big companies in the IT field... Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc. Almost all of the big IT companies are based in the States, and believe it or not, put a lot of resources in developing the next generation of IT people in the US. The fact is that the US is very advanced in most areas of computing, and unless your interests lie in artificial intelligence (Japan is advanced in AI), most Japanese companies will no doubt ask why you, an American, chose to go to a Japanese college when you could have had a (presumably) better education in the States. When (not if) they ask you this, you'll need to be able to come up with a good response.

-Other advice: Since you're dead-set on going to college in Japan (which I don't quite understand, but that's another topic), take programming classes that are most likely to be directly applicable to Japanese computing environments. For example, you'll definitely need to know how to handle Unicode input/output, storage, representation, etc. as anything written in Japanese will most likely use Unicode.

The reason people give the stop, slow down, think advice is because... well... people don't stop and slow down to think about what they're doing as it applies to what they want to do.

As the above poster states, you have a desire to live and work in Japan inthe IT field but you are intent on attending a Japanese university.

Honestly, you don't have enough knowledge or information on the subject to lecture people on what not to lecture you about.

Take the good with the bad.
If you want help, don't come in on the offensive and disrespect the very people from which you are seeking assistance.

You need to realize that many of the people giving advice on this board have the type of life and work experience that most people only dream about.

As a high school student, you should consider showing a little more respect.

-Japanese business thoughts on degree location: ...That being said, in your (and my) field of interest, having an IT-related degree from a university in the US is an advantage over having one from Japan. Why? Think about the big companies in the IT field... Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc. Almost all of the big IT companies are based in the States, and believe it or not, put a lot of resources in developing the next generation of IT people in the US. The fact is that the US is very advanced in most areas of computing, and unless your interests lie in artificial intelligence (Japan is advanced in AI), most Japanese companies will no doubt ask why you, an American, chose to go to a Japanese college when you could have had a (presumably) better education in the States. When (not if) they ask you this, you'll need to be able to come up with a good response.

Thank you so much for this xD... I completely forgot about this. Guess I deserved a stop, think speech after all...

(The following paragraph is more if your curious, feel free to skip it if you want).

Although in terms of responding to that question, it majorly has to do with the fact that the specific degree I'm thinking of actually is a business degree and as such while I'd be in Japan for 4 years it'd allow me to make sure my Japanese is well polished before being placed in the workplace as a bilingual IT administrator or such. Overall, in IT it is really crucial to be able to communicate properly with people on computers and why they decide not to work and etc. All the while being polite, making it easy to understand and you know the fun stuff... I'm still working on getting this right in English let alone getting it down in another Language, as such 4 years in Japan would a really help me out in that regard. At least on the Japanese side of things... Although I'm summarizing a lot so please don't take everything word for word.

The reason people give the stop, slow down, think advice is because... well... people don't stop and slow down to think about what they're doing as it applies to what they want to do.

Indeed, which what I was trying to convey (although I wasn't intending to be so offensive) is that I plan on stopping, slowing down, and thinking. However, the only problem is I didn't have any food for thought and as such stopping, slowing down, and not thinking just doesn't accomplish much xD...

As the above poster states, you have a desire to live and work in Japan inthe IT field but you are intent on attending a Japanese university.

Honestly, you don't have enough knowledge or information on the subject to lecture people on what not to lecture you about.

Again, all I wanted was the knowledge so that I can think while stopping and slowing down.

Take the good with the bad.
If you want help, don't come in on the offensive and disrespect the very people from which you are seeking assistance.

This is where I failed, and I'm sorry for that. I wasn't intending on being offensive in the least. Truth is I didn't really proof-read/even if I did I was extremely sleepy at the time so my ability to think straight was on par with being drunk.

You need to realize that many of the people giving advice on this board have the type of life and work experience that most people only dream about.

As a high school student, you should consider showing a little more respect.

This is why I refer to this forum for this kind of information, as it usually is really really helpful and as such I'm very thankful for everyone's time and effort taken to respond to my questions.

However, I am truly sorry for the disrespect I showed you and other responders earlier. ‹–‚µ‚Ä‚­‚¾‚³‚¢�BPlease and thank you for any further advice given.

Hello,
The people above have some points. You should have little more respect :D
But anyways.... I am in a similar situation as you. Let me tell you a bit about mine, so I can make my point my clear ~
I am a junior in America but possibly moving back to Japan to attend an international boarding school in Ichinomiya. I am at N2 of the JLPT and know alot about Japan (I was a winter exchange student with YFU).

I want to go into the Robotics field or Computer Science (leaning more towards robotics...).

Now to my answer to your question.

First off...
You Japanese(as you stated) is ok, if you are a high school freshman or sophomore. If you are a junior or senior.... you are in a bad position. Even though you are in Japan, that doesn't mean your Japanese will become amazing in 11 months. I know kids who spent 4 years of high school in Japan and spoke basic Japanese. In general the key is to be n1 or n2 by the time you apply to university. The only universities in japan that allow you to enter without Japanese is Waseda, Sophia and Temple. But for computer science, none at the moment have english classes or special classes for non japanese speakers.
( I need some more info you japanese please ^_^) In general you need to have a pretty good grasp of Japanese.

After that, you need to take the EJU or entrance exammmmm~
Depends on the University. Need to have a good record, SATs, ACTs.

Also, have a strong motivation. I've had this dream since i was 5 years old :D so you should have some motivation.
Again need some more info.
What program are you with?


but as far as visa, you should just stop by you local Japanese consulate in America or if your a senior, contact the immigration office in Japan to apply for the college visa change (only if you have a pre college visa).

I hope this helps :D
Message me if you want me to send you some links
~Haruka

I would still like to apologize for the abrasive writing style I used earler.

Based upon this last post, I don't think its too possible considering if I were in the US right now I'd be a senior so xD...

As far as my level of Japanese goes, depending on if your American or Japanese you may or may not have heard of Monopoly... I've been able (with the assistance of an electronic dictionary of course) to explain those rules and how to play the game to my host families thus far (on the second one now). So if you know the game it might help to know that, but if you don't well I can maintain a decent conversation... the major problem though is my lack of vocabulary in a lot of cases, although my grammar can be a bit rough as well. On another note though, I'm really (really) far out in the countryside of Japan and as such people's English vocabulary is rather limited... Most of the time if I ask a question about a Japanese word its explained to me in Japanese and after some trial and error with words or I find a dictionary we usually can get it done. Either way, I'm sure I'll learn a lot and I understand that I won't become the best in the world in only 11 months, but I do know that while I'm in a more immersive environment that I'll learn faster than I normally do.

Since you asked, I'm with Rotary. Speaking of which, I was accepted into Rotary because of my strong motivation. The whole story of how I got into Japan is long, but just to put in perspective how strong my "resolve"/motivation is... The $5,000 or so that I needed to raise up to stay in Japan for this year was almost entirely earned via my various part time jobs. I referee soccer, hockey, and lacrosse and also got a job working at McDonalds in the summer. $900 of that money was earned through a scholarship I won, but overall the other $4,100 was earned through my hard work. Plus self-teaching myself Japanese was a big plus with the application process apparently...

Although, as far as grades go... yeah we're rocking a solid 2.77 barely making the minimum GPA requirement of my exchange program and just barely not making the class rank requirements as well... So yeah I basically had to show the exchange program that I was motivated enough to have them overlook my poor grades... However, I don't know how well that can work on Japanese colleges if at all...

However to end a good note, your post was really helpful and I'll make sure to keep that information in mind while I'm considering this later on in my exchange. At this specific point in time I'm leaning towards American college but I have a lot too see and experience yet about Japanese culture, lifestyle, and more. In conclusion... we shall see.

To OP & Haruka:

A couple of other pointers should you two still be interested when you enroll as an IT student in college:

- A lot of IT languages are based off of Latin-derived language. A good number of computing terms are universal no matter what the spoken language, so don't worry about having perfect Japanese. If you program applications neatly, and with a well-defined structure, any programmer from any country should be able to understand what computing concepts you are trying to achieve. Just make sure that your Japanese abilities are to the level where you can address any detailed questions effectively.

- Don't try and specialize on one topic too much, especially while you're still an undergrad. There's plenty of time, funding, and resources available to focus on narrower topics such as AI or System Design should you decide to go to graduate school. A Bachelor's in most IT degrees is about gaining a broad base of knowledge in all sorts of topics, so that you by graduation, you can understand how each topic of IT is used in other topics and utilize that effectively. (One example is predictive technologies in AI; a lot of search engines use this feature to predict what users are actually searching for.)

And also to the OP:
Don't worry about rushing to college too much. I remember being in a very similar situation when I was a senior in HS; wanting to really go to school in Japan without weighing the pros and cons. Trust me, there are opportunities out there for IT grads (in the US) to work with the Japanese market if you're motivated enough. 4-5 years of college may sound like an eternity, but before you know it, you'll be getting interviews and company presentations from all over the place.