Monbukagakusho Undergraduate 2016

Lawrence1 said:

Hey Ichiko. Glad to see you interested in studying in Japan! There a few things you need to think about first. The most important thing to think about is what you want to study. If you want to be an undergraduate then simply look at the major you want to study, look at the location, and find the school with the highest reputation or school that is most meaningful for you. At that point it is simply a matter of applying for the school.

If you want to be graduate student then there is a bit more work. It is important to look at the school and location but even more important is research or lab you will work in. I recommend doing the same steps as undergraduate and then when you decided which schools you would like to apply to, look at the faculty pages to find out the research each professor of your major is doing. Find out which research topic appeals to your interest or skills the most and then read a few papers by that professor. Once you feel that you know enough about the work of the professor, then write a nice email to him inquiring about joining his/her lab. It is tough since some professors won't reply but even if they don't reply please don't pester them since more often than not, they are simply busy. Some schools require you to contact a professor after you started your application but check before hand. Eventually when you secured a position in their lab. Your professor should give you an idea of the topic of research.

Once you have completed all of this, it is time to start your application. There are two tracks for applying for MEXT. The first is embassy recommended or university recommended. One can be easier or not depending on your quota for the embassy recommended in your country. I personally did the university recommended. The paper work on these process are nearly the same except that with embassy recommended, you need to apply earlier and take exams at the embassy. The process for embassy is a little bit more work. You do all your application through the embassy. When they accept you, you will get three choses of schools that you want to go to. At that case, you need to contact the admission department of the school and the lab you want to work in and ask to become a research student. As a research student you focus on research for a year and study for entrance exam so you can actually apply for a degree program. You basically don't directly become a degree student in the school until after you take the entrance exam a year after you apply through embassy.

If you apply for university recommended it is basically the same as applying directly for the school but you need a research plan. The benefit of university recommended is that you get direct entry into the school and can get a university scholarship that is not necessarily the MEXT scholarship. (Which means if you do masters with that scholarship, you can apply for MEXT scholarship for Ph.D without the 3 year rule of going back to your home country).

If you do undergraduate, then research may not be necessary at all. It is useful to know Japanese.

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Ichiko said:

Thank you very much Lawrence for your explaination about Monbukagakusho . Are you applying mext this year or you had applied it ?

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Lawrence1 said:

Oh I have already been accepted. I will going to the university of tokyo in september to do my masters. So basically I just wrote what I did and what I heard that many other people do for at least the graduate school application.

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Ichiko said:

I'm glad to hear that so can you tell me how's the exam , interview or something like that . Or how's your preparation for this scholarship test ?
Are you fluent in japanese ?

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Lawrence1 said:

I am not so sure how relevant this will be for you (since I applied through graduate school) but here you go.

So for me I went through the university recommended route. Which I feel is a lot easier than the embassy recommended route because there is not often an exam or many interviews.

I applied to todai just like you apply for any school. You need letters of recommendations and write essay. The only thing a bit out of the ordinary was that I needed to contact a professor in order to get accepted into his lab since that was required for graduate students.

For undergraduates that is not an issue since they don't expect you to do research. If there is an exam it will likely be on the relevant topic to what you will be study (for example if you want to do physics they may give you an exam on math and physics)

However if you apply for a international program and the medium of instruction will be english, you will likely need to submit an english proficiency exam score like TOEFL. This only applies if you come from a school where the medium of instruction was not english. If you come from an english speaking country or school, you don't need to submit such exam.

You might need to submit SAT or other similar/relevant standardized test score too. (please check the application guidelines of whatever school you apply to)

For embassy recommended you will need to do an interview at an embassy, and they have an exam in Japanese, math, and I think english and maybe science. Since I never had to take the exam, I can't give you an exact measure of the difficultly but I have heard mixed reviews (some people say it is easy and some people say it is hard) and likely depends on how much people your embassy will accept each year. For the interview, I heard that they want to know why you want to go japan and you should talk about why the school or schools and major you chosen are special for you.

Given this is based on a perspective that mostly researched graduate school application procedures, I highly recommend you look at the admission guidelines on your embassy webpage or the admissions section of the school website .

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rye003 said:

Konbanwa minna, I'm new here, I'm brazilian and I'll be applying for MEXT 2016 undergraduate too! My course is Japanese Language, what about you guys? I'm studying English and Japanese very very hard, but I'm kinda worried about the math exam! There are some isseus that I haven't seen at school, so I'd like to know how are you studying for math?

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu! ^^v

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