Contacting Advisers for the MEXT Scholarship

[Nall-ohki]

So, I've passed the initial phases of the research scholarship process and have received the recommendation of my embassy.

The next step is to contact potential advisers at the specific universities I hope to attend in order to gain their approval to study under them.

Basically, my plan so far has been that I will email each professor, tell them my research goals, and ask. Seems straight forward, no? Well, it's the equivalent of a "cold call", and it's something that seems like it should be done delicately at the very least.

Does anyone here who has received the MEXT Graduate scholarship have any pointers on this step? I'm speaking of any part of the process between first contacting the professor to getting the unofficial letter of acceptance from the university.

Information, anecdotes, etc., would be welcome.

 

[Alma]

I have to quote myself from other thread where you asked same thing.

congratulations!!!
and about your question, I think I wrote in details about my experience, search a little bit. good luck!

yes, I really wrote in details. Can't find it now...

what is your major? do you have any preferences?

 

[Nall-ohki]

I have to quote myself from other thread where you asked same thing.
yes, I really wrote in details. Can't find it now...
what is your major? do you have any preferences?

Sorry about the late reply, Alma - for some reason, I wasn't alerted properly to your follow-up post.

Sorry about the multiple threads, but I was trying to balance between reusing threads and having the thread appropriate to the topic.

Thank you for the congrats.

My major will be computer science (AI), but specifically dealing with Computational Linguistics and Evolutionary Computation.

I'll see if I can find your previous posts concerning your experience.

 

[Alma]

I understand completely why you opened new thread. congrats again.

I couldn't find my post (did look too much, I admit).. so here is just a little something.

-feel free to write at any address you find. most of the time, you will not get reply.
-if you see there is special address for international students (especially MEXT scholarship students) bingo! they will most probably answer you.
-i contacted them all first to ask what documents to send them:
--some just wanted scanned documents (one that applied to embassy) (yey)
--some wanted original documents from embassy (!!!)
--some wanted so many many documents that i could not possibly provide (I guess to turn me off at beginning)
-I've found some university with list of professors and their e-mail address. I wrote, but never got answer.


so, my advice to you is to be patient and expect everything! do not get frustrated, and write to every university that have department you need.

good luck, and keep us updated!

 

[beebeegon7777]

Congrats Nall-Ohki with your passing from the embassy. Concerning the question I do not have any experience with finding supervisor in Japan since I am waiting for the results of the interview but I did some search before I went to interview and found one useful web-site that should theoretically help you with your search (though I have not yet tried). It is h t t p:// read. jst. go. jp (remove space) I think you can check this site and what is good is that there are phone numbers of professors as well which means you can phone them instead of writing or phone and write .
Once again I never tried but I think it should help.

 

[Nall-ohki]

Started sending out cold emails today. It's hard finding people who are appropriate to my research... this is gonna be tough.

 

[Nall-ohki]

Okay... some good news and bad news...

Good news: my first choice of my first school is very interested in helping me. I should be able to get accepted there.

Bad news: they don't allow admissions for MEXT recipients in April - only October. This shortens my scholarship by 6 months and probably doesn't allow me to take Japanese classes (which I was hoping to take in order to pass 1-kyuu / help pass grad school examination).

So, I'm going to keep applying other places (as my embassy recommended), and try to find some other places that might be better in this way.

Is the October-only entrance for MEXT recipients normal? Anyone here who's gotten the scholarship run into this?

 

[Reonagg]

Good news: my first choice of my first school is very interested in helping me. I should be able to get accepted there.

Congrats!. Even if it only allows October enrollment, congrats!

 

[Nall-ohki]

Update:

The website for the school was very confusing and fooled me. After contacting the school directly, I found out that they DO accept Embassy-recommended MEXT applicants in April (it was only University-recommended MEXT applicants they accepted in October... I should have known this; I received it that way before).

I thank my stars that I noticed a discrepancy in the information and asked directly. I will say this to be a cautionary tale, though: don't trust information printed on a website; verify it with the school.