What you should know when you're applying for Japan

If you're applying through the study abroad department at WMU there are some important things that I can tell you through personal experience. The first of which is: expect a lot of uncertainty and anxiety.

The process basically goes like this:

1. You've learned about study abroad to Japan through a class, a friend, or gone to the study abroad fair. Great. They give you handouts about all the schools over there they are affiliated with and a run down of the program there. Bad thing: usually the costs haven't been updated for the year you'll be going so they've left the old costs from last year on the handouts. My costs went from around $14,000 to $20,000 when they finally made the switch.

2. You visit with the head of the Japanese department or you head over to Haenicke's Study Abroad office for more information and to talk to somebody about the program. They usually give you an application for the program and offer to give you more of those school sheets.

3. You have until December to get your paperwork in order (it's a bit earlier for summer program but I didn't do that so I don't remember the exact timeframe). You have to have 2 recommendations from faculty one is supposed to be from a japanese related class and the other SHOULD be somebody you took a major class from. You also have to have the completed application, pictures of yourself in passport size, and copies of your transcripts (yes that includes WMU transcripts!) from all colleges you've attended. If you've got your passport already they also want a copy of that.

4. Great you've scrambled around and gotten all your paperwork together, you go home for christmas break and come back in January wondering if you've gotten into the program or not. The school tells you that you should be notified if your application was accepted "sometime in January" let me tell you, it wasn't unil almost February for us. And all that means is that you've passed the first hurdle, do your grades, classes, and instructor recommendations qualify you for the program? If the answer is yes then you'll be granted an interview to determine which school you'll be going to. You're allowed to pick 3 that you'd LIKE to go to but that doesn't mean you'll end up there.

5. Expect to wait another 2 weeks or so to hear about the interview, then expect them to give you a random day and time to show up. If you can't make it you can try and reschedule but they like to have them all done in one day so don't plan on going out of town that week. The interview basically is a 'round table' of teachers from the japanese department, plus a religions teacher, and maybe a political scientist or sociologist that has a japanese background. They'll ask you questions based on your class level. My questions were about what I wanted to do while I was in Japan, what did I want to see, what did I want to eat, etc.

6. After that expect not to hear back from them again for a couple of weeks after that. The problem is that a lot of the scholarships you'll be interested in want you to be accepted to the program before applying and the due dates were all just a few days after we found out about our acceptances. So have those ready to go at a moments notice!

7. You'll be told a week or so before spring break to comeand pick up your application for the Japanese University that you've been chosen for. The applications are usually do about 3 weeks from then. The requirments of these schools vary depending on which one you're chosen for. A few schools require physicals and special immunizations or records of them, some of them want long essays in Japanese or English, others require more recommendations, etc. They also requre more photos of you, your passport number and other info. Otaru required pretty much nothing. I had to fill out a 3 page application of pretty standard stuff and put in a 'study plan' that could be written in english. No long essay or physical required.

8.If you've made it this far and are still in the running then don't expect to hear anything further from the department for about a month. You'll finish up your spring semester and head out to wherever you go for the summer. About mid-may you'll hear back from the university on whether or not the Japanese University accepted you. If they did they will tell you that more information is forthcoming and to wait. Again. In my case the university sent the information directly to me instead of to Western (where i would then have to come pick it up) and so I had to photocopy paperwork for Western to put in their files.

9. Now begins a waiting game, over the course of the summer you'll receive more papers from the university of your choice. Some schools send you tons of info right away, Otaru doesn't. I literally had to wait and wait, it was like pulling teeth. They would send me two pieces of info and then I'd have to wait another month to get more info. I had to wait until the beginning of July to get the information on when I HAD to be in Japan for school so I could buy my plane ticket! And I still haven't received information on classes and times yet.

(This will be updated when I've got more info to tell you!)