MEXT Scholarships through the universities

[tomoni]

There seems to be a wide variety of opinions and perhaps some misunderstandings about MEXT Scholarships through the universities.

These comments are for graduate students (meaning people who want to do a masters or doctoral degree).

Firstly, about scholarships in general, the Embassy Recommended scholarship is the probably the most prestigious and most competitive because the awardee can got to any university (and usually choose one of the famous 7 universities). Conditions vary according to country, but generally you need to be one of the top students in your school (if not your country ) to receive it.

The university recommended scholarships are available at almost all national universities (now national university corporations- after becoming semi-autonomous). Most information on the web seems to focus on the Global 30 which is a program designed to bring in foreign students to internationalise Japanese universities. What many probably do not know is that all national universities (even those not listed in the global 30) are trying to increase the number of international students- and many have some kind of funding. BUT generally speaking, your university needs an MOU (a general university agreement ) to be eligible. So a good first step is to find out if that agreement exists. Generally, you will probably find that there is some prof in your school that studied in that particular university (at some point) and that is how things began. There are some scholarships available (again they are very competitive).

MEXT tartgets: There are scholarships that target special areas (and are available to the universities as another tyope of recommend scholar). For example MEXT is targeting Africa as an area of interest so many universities will have special scholarships for students from Africa (and many universities do not have existing relationships with African universities so "cold calling" may be a possibility).

Special programs exist at many universities (and usually do not have the MOU requirement) and may have scholarships as well.
Basically the only way to find this is to vista each university's webpage and search. This is time consuming and not many people do it which could give you a "leg up" in that there might not be so many applications.

Domestic scholarships
There are many of these such as LOCAL (offered by local groups- Lions club, rotary club, international exchange groups- speaking Japanese is important for getting one of these), JASSO scholarships, Tuition reductions (based on income), company scholarships (based on research - very competitive)

SO in short, if you really want to come to Japan, shoot for the big famous scholarships, but dig around university by university and you may find some scholarships that are largely unknown.

Hope that helps.

 

[ovargasra]

Hi Tonomi thanks for your explanation about the MEXT scholarship through university recommendation.

I agree with you. To go to study to Japan there are a lot of opportunities, Researching in each university, sure you can find a scholarship that could be a big chance.

I think that there is a lack of information during the final step through university recommendation, when the university recommends you to the MEXT (not in your post in the whole internet) I had read about people that don't get the acceptance from MEXT after waiting the whole process.

 

[tomoni]

I think that there is a lack of information during the final step through university recommendation, when the university recommends you to the MEXT (not in your post in the whole internet) I had read about people that don't get the acceptance from MEXT after waiting the whole process.

There are several possible reasons for this, but the most likely (I am speculating) is that the univeristy has a limited number of slots from JASSO and more professors wanting to accept students than slots. This means that there is an a screening of eligible candidates (by some review above the individual professor level - such as the admissions committee or international exchange committee or scholarships committee, etc).

So if 10 profs are wanting to take students and the university (or faculty) only has 2 slots, there must be some internal review of which two to submit for JASSO support. BUT before they can have this internal review, they must make sure that all possible recipients met the university admission requirements, and JASSO requirements (incidentally, they have lowered their requirements to 2.3 on a 3.0 scale).

But this means that all students must submit all the documents and clear all stages to get internally short listed for the scholarship, and the of the 10 in this example, 2 are chosen and recommend to JASSO, and the other 8 do not get a scholarship.

This is one possible (IMO likely) scenario.

Hope that helps.