I’m an American high school student hoping to apply to a college in Japan, but I don’t really know how it goes. The college in my vicinity doesn’t really do entrance exams, but I figured it might be standard practice in Japan, so I looked up Tokyo University entrance exams and found previous tests, but I’m hoping I’m mistaken about something or other since the problems I found were far and away more complicated than anything I’m able to do. Link for reference: [https://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/entra/examarchive\_e.shtml](https://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/entra/examarchive_e.shtml).
If, as I hope, I am mistaken, then I’d like to ask if there are any special steps I need to take or prepare for (also, I think it’s probably the same, but applications usually get submitted 9 months before the start of the school year (I think it starts in April in Japan?) right?).
3 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Japan University System Questions**
I’m an American high school student hoping to apply to a college in Japan, but I don’t really know how it goes. The college in my vicinity doesn’t really do entrance exams, but I figured it might be standard practice in Japan, so I looked up Tokyo University entrance exams and found previous tests, but I’m hoping I’m mistaken about something or other since the problems I found were far and away more complicated than anything I’m able to do. Link for reference: [https://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/entra/examarchive_e.shtml](https://www.i.u-tokyo.ac.jp/edu/entra/examarchive_e.shtml).
If, as I hope, I am mistaken, then I’d like to ask if there are any special steps I need to take or prepare for (also, I think it’s probably the same, but applications usually get submitted 9 months before the start of the school year (I think it starts in April in Japan?) right?).
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The problems you linked are for admission to graduate school. I wouldn’t expect most high school student to be able to handle them.
Many Japanese universities (especially private ones) conducting their classes in English waive their test requirement for foreign students and judge those students by their merits, HS grades, SAT scores, etc.
Many Japanese universities conducting their classes in Japanese, use the [Examination for Japanese University Admission for International Students {EJU}](https://www.jasso.go.jp/en/ryugaku/eju/index.html) to evaluate international students who wish to study at the undergraduate level have the Japanese language skills and the basic academic abilities needed. The Japanese language of the EJU is tough {N-2 or N-1 level} but the subject matter is fairly normal academic stuff that even foreign students from developing countries can pass. Some private universities with accept foreign students in their programs conducted in Japanese without the EJU if you take the university’s Japanese language classes for one year.
> I looked up Tokyo University entrance exams and found previous tests… the problems I found were far and away more complicated
Admission to Todai should be as hard as Harvard or Oxford. Are you sure you’re in that league? Also, there several paths to admission to Todai—Each has separate tests: https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/adm/inbound/en/programs-admissions-u.html