Hi dblbstrd,
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. I found it pretty useful, especially since i applied to do a masters in engineering as well.
Should i get the scholarship, one of the main things that worry me is the entrance exam. I applied to go to the University of Tokyo and i've looked through their website. I know that there'll be an oral and written exam. It seems to me that they conduct the exam in Japanese and the website states that there are no exceptions made for international students. I don't know if you do go to the University of Tokyo but either way, if you could share your experience, i'd be really grateful. Was it conducted in Japanese and if so, was it extremely tough?
Also, I'm curious to know what it was like for you as a research student? Did u do any of the research u outlined in the study plan u submitted whilst applying for the scholarship? Or is that something u do when ur a masters student? Does it all depend solely on your supervisor?
I'm sorry for all the questions..especially when i offer no answers for yours. I do hope however, you find a solution to your problem.
Thanks again.
Well, at my school the written portion of the exam was offered in either Japanese or English, so of course I took it in English. But it was mainly math stuff, so it may not make much of a difference. They might provide previous years' exams for you to review, which would help you learn what kinds of problems there will be, and what sort of technical terms are likely to show up. We have the past three years' exams online in PDF form but have to go to the dept. office to request the English version. Some of the people around the lab also had notebooks full of several previous years' exams (up to 6-7 years ago) often with solutions that we could study from.
The format at my school (not Tokyo but another national uni) was that there were two math tests (both required), and eight specialized subject tests from which we had to choose two.
The first math test covered calculus, ordinary differential equations, vector analysis, and linear algebra, and we had to pick three out of the four sections to do.
The second math test covered fourier series/transforms, laplace transforms, and partial differential equations, and we had to pick two of three.
The subject tests were things like control engineering, mechanical systems, materials science, thermodynamics, electricity/magnetism, quantum mechanics.
However this is just the mech eng department exam.. the exams are different for electrical engineering and computer science I think.
Then, there was the oral part, which consisted of a talk on the applicant's graduation thesis (I didn't have a thesis so I just did a general overview of my research experience), followed by a little interview by some profs from the department. This had to be in Japanese for master's applicants. PhD applicants have the option of doing it in English because they don't have to take any classes anyway.
As a research student, I did get to work some on my project, including a trip to a research facility to do some tests on our stuff, but a lot of the work I did at first was sort of like chores. It all depends on your professor and your labmates. I find at the moment that I don't interact much with my professor, I deal more with the PhD student who is in charge of my project.
And I spent one full month just studying for the exam and not doing anything else, which I guess paid off because I passed on the first try!
By the way, if you are taking the intensive Japanese language course first, don't expect to spend very much time in your lab for the first six months. It takes up a lot of your time, and if it's not near your lab you won't have much time to get there unless you spend all evenings there or something. I already had some Japanese experience so they sent me straight to my lab instead of the language course...