Study abroad confusion

4 comments

1. This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.

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   **Study abroad confusion**

   Hey guys! I have been wanting to study abroad for a while now and have finally worked up the courage to apply to go to Japan for my spring semester of 2024 but am really struggling to pick which university I should apply to. My school offers exchanges to Keio, Sophia and Waseda. I was initially leaning towards Waseda based on what I have read on reddit so far but then found out that my school offers only year long exchanges or spring exchanges to Waseda so fall would not be an option for me. If going to Waseda is far better than Keio or Sophia then I can hold off and apply for Spring semester of 2025 but I do not know what is the best decision to make. Any suggestions?
   For reference, I do not speak Japanese fluently and have started learning now to make sure I can hold my own during my study abroad. I would love to meet new people irrespective of their ethnicity but would also like to interact with more local Japanese folks. I do want to make the most of my study abroad and balance out my academics with partying, sports clubs and social events. I would also like to attend a university that has a badminton club as badminton is an important hobby of mine which I feel could also help me make friends.

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2. Either Waseda, Keio, or Sophia would be a fine choice. All are likely to have badminton clubs, though I suspect the array of clubs and activities would be far larger at both Waseda and Keio, given their larger student populations.

3. I definitely recommend Sophia, even though I didn’t end up starting my study abroad due to health reasons. For a little background: I was meant to study abroad there from September 2023 until February 2024, cancelled in early September. Therefore I’ve gone through the entire application process. They were always very quick to reply to e-mails, the communicated deadlines multiple times and even extended the application deadline as some applicants were having difficulties handing in a specific document. I’ve heard lots of positive things about Sophia from classmates who studied abroad there as well! Plus, at Sophia you can choose between the regular Japanese course (6x 100 minutes a week) or the intensive course (10x 100 minutes a week) to match your preferred learning speed 🙂

   Feel free to ask questions if you have any and I’ll try to answer them to the best of my ability!

4. This is my own personal experience so take this with a grain of salt. I studied abroad at Waseda and I personally hated it, I was just entering N3 level o Japanese and they did not have enough classes for students at my level so I endded up in 2 classes that. Way below my level, like survival Japanese and 2 classes that were essentially for N2/N1 students. The class signups are not first come first serve, there’s a period of time to sign up and when it ends they do a lottery. I got hal the classes I needed for the semester had to sign up again during the second period, got none of those classes and then had to g in person to the office to pick out whatever classes were leftover. I learned more Japanese working t my part time job than I did at Waseda.