Many people have done so. There’s not much merit in taking a lower lever if you’re confident in your skills. There are plenty of mock exams and practice books out there, so you can check out the flow of the exam beforehand. If you’re at N1 level, even N3 will be *very* *very* easy and you’ll probably finish in half the time available.
Not N1, but I skipped directly to N2. Then I got my N1 6 months later.
Theres really no significant merit in getting the lower levels other than understanding your current level and getting used to the JLPT format (which you can achieve by practicing mock exams)
So save your money if you have no reason to get certificate for the lower levels. Most companies only acknowledge N2 and N1 anyway. Which mean those are the only two that has real values.
I’ve mentioned this here before, but I only took N2 and N1 (actually, I took the old 2級 and 1級 back before the restructuring). I never really cared about the JLPT and took them both as afterthoughts mostly only because a teacher/co-worker/whatever told me at the time “Your Japanese is good enough that you should be able to pass.”
I didn’t really do much JLPT-specific studying except skimming through books at a bookstore to get a general idea of what would be on it, the question format, etc. I ended up getting a perfect score on 2級 and 396/400 (missed one question) on 1級. Pretty much all of my Japanese was learned through a combination of classroom study, self-study involving extensive consumption of native materials outside of class, and (by the time I took 1級) a couple years of living and working in Japan.
Basically, there’s no reason to take anything lower than N2 except if you feel you absolutely need some objective evaluation of your Japanese skills. N1 and to a lesser extent N2 are the only ones that will mean anything to an employer/whatever if they see it on a resume. Anything N3 or lower just kind of says “this person is still a relative beginner at Japanese who’s made X arbitrary level of progress”.
Not directly to N1, but I started by taking N2 and then N1 a couple years later and passed both.
I’d only really recommend it for people who already have a Kanji based language as mother tongue.
I went directly to N2, there’s no real reason to do a lower level if you are confident in your abilities.
I mean, I took N2 before I took N1, but going straight to N1 is also completely fine.
There is virtually no merit in taking N5-N3 and unless you just hate money I’d actually suggest that most people skip them.
I got N1 and never took N2 or below. I took high school Japanese which got me to somewhere between N4 and N3 as an estimate, never took those exams. I then got a lot of Japanese input from being an anime weeb and trying my hand at translating later on (with lots of help from Jisho because I couldn’t read kanji for shit at first). I decided to take JLPT when my Japanese had already improved a lot from the translating work. For JLPT specifically I used Kanji Study (Android app) to properly learn kanji, as opposed to “I’ve looked up this kanji 15 times, I’m pretty sure it was this…”
At least when it comes to English teaching jobs, N3 isn’t completely useless either. Some Boes list N3 as a minimum requirements for direct hire ALTs.
People who aren’t taking the test to get a job might also want to do it for a sense of personal achievement, or to get a sense of their Japanese ability in terms of some standardized scale.
Besides that, you will also encounter people who fail the N2 or N1 tests over and over again because they believe that the lower levels are useless. Whether that’s true or not, many of those people are wasting money by taking repeatedly taking a test that is too hard for them, and some of them wouldn’t even be able to pass the lower level tests.
A lot of people here really hate test taking, but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you also feel that way.
There are no merits to the test *at any level* unless someone else is requiring that particular form of certification. That said, the merits of skipping previous levels is that you save money and don’t have to wait 6 months to a year to take the test for your actual level.
So my understanding is that the N2 and N1 are the only ones that even look decent on a piece of paper, more specifically a resume if you’re trying to get into a company where business Japanese is frequently (if not always) used. Some would say that the reality is your level actually needs to be high enough to pass an interview that’s completely in Japanese, no certification proving your level required.
That said… while learning Japanese is easier for some than others, there are those of us who don’t have the time to do 3+ hours of studying a day (most notably those of us who are working full-time and not students of any sort). Such is my personal case. I take the lower levels just as proof that I’m on the right track, i.e. that the slow-and-steady approach does, in fact, pay off. Does it take more time? Absolutely. But at the same time, I’m not in any situation where I 100% need the high levels of Japanese for anything. It’s also the closest thing to any sort of test that WILL measure your ability- and is available to the public at large. In other words- you study for a while and decided to jump straight to N2 or N1, and then you fail. You’ll probably very quickly go, “Oh shit, I suck at this language and just wasted a bunch of time and money.” Meanwhile, taking it at a lower level is more reassuring: “It’s not the high levels, but it means that I HAVE made progress!”
I took the old (pre-“N”) JLPT2 in about 1995 or 1996 without any of the lower levels, then took N1 in about 2015. Does that count?
I started with N2 and it was a good decision. JLPT prep is boring and formulaic as heck so it’s a good idea to start as late into your process of learning J as possible.
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Many people have done so. There’s not much merit in taking a lower lever if you’re confident in your skills. There are plenty of mock exams and practice books out there, so you can check out the flow of the exam beforehand. If you’re at N1 level, even N3 will be *very* *very* easy and you’ll probably finish in half the time available.
Not N1, but I skipped directly to N2. Then I got my N1 6 months later.
Theres really no significant merit in getting the lower levels other than understanding your current level and getting used to the JLPT format (which you can achieve by practicing mock exams)
So save your money if you have no reason to get certificate for the lower levels. Most companies only acknowledge N2 and N1 anyway. Which mean those are the only two that has real values.
I’ve mentioned this here before, but I only took N2 and N1 (actually, I took the old 2級 and 1級 back before the restructuring). I never really cared about the JLPT and took them both as afterthoughts mostly only because a teacher/co-worker/whatever told me at the time “Your Japanese is good enough that you should be able to pass.”
I didn’t really do much JLPT-specific studying except skimming through books at a bookstore to get a general idea of what would be on it, the question format, etc. I ended up getting a perfect score on 2級 and 396/400 (missed one question) on 1級. Pretty much all of my Japanese was learned through a combination of classroom study, self-study involving extensive consumption of native materials outside of class, and (by the time I took 1級) a couple years of living and working in Japan.
Basically, there’s no reason to take anything lower than N2 except if you feel you absolutely need some objective evaluation of your Japanese skills. N1 and to a lesser extent N2 are the only ones that will mean anything to an employer/whatever if they see it on a resume. Anything N3 or lower just kind of says “this person is still a relative beginner at Japanese who’s made X arbitrary level of progress”.
Not directly to N1, but I started by taking N2 and then N1 a couple years later and passed both.
I’d only really recommend it for people who already have a Kanji based language as mother tongue.
I went directly to N2, there’s no real reason to do a lower level if you are confident in your abilities.
I mean, I took N2 before I took N1, but going straight to N1 is also completely fine.
There is virtually no merit in taking N5-N3 and unless you just hate money I’d actually suggest that most people skip them.
I got N1 and never took N2 or below. I took high school Japanese which got me to somewhere between N4 and N3 as an estimate, never took those exams. I then got a lot of Japanese input from being an anime weeb and trying my hand at translating later on (with lots of help from Jisho because I couldn’t read kanji for shit at first). I decided to take JLPT when my Japanese had already improved a lot from the translating work. For JLPT specifically I used Kanji Study (Android app) to properly learn kanji, as opposed to “I’ve looked up this kanji 15 times, I’m pretty sure it was this…”
At least when it comes to English teaching jobs, N3 isn’t completely useless either. Some Boes list N3 as a minimum requirements for direct hire ALTs.
People who aren’t taking the test to get a job might also want to do it for a sense of personal achievement, or to get a sense of their Japanese ability in terms of some standardized scale.
Besides that, you will also encounter people who fail the N2 or N1 tests over and over again because they believe that the lower levels are useless. Whether that’s true or not, many of those people are wasting money by taking repeatedly taking a test that is too hard for them, and some of them wouldn’t even be able to pass the lower level tests.
A lot of people here really hate test taking, but it’s up to you to decide whether or not you also feel that way.
There are no merits to the test *at any level* unless someone else is requiring that particular form of certification. That said, the merits of skipping previous levels is that you save money and don’t have to wait 6 months to a year to take the test for your actual level.
So my understanding is that the N2 and N1 are the only ones that even look decent on a piece of paper, more specifically a resume if you’re trying to get into a company where business Japanese is frequently (if not always) used. Some would say that the reality is your level actually needs to be high enough to pass an interview that’s completely in Japanese, no certification proving your level required.
That said… while learning Japanese is easier for some than others, there are those of us who don’t have the time to do 3+ hours of studying a day (most notably those of us who are working full-time and not students of any sort). Such is my personal case. I take the lower levels just as proof that I’m on the right track, i.e. that the slow-and-steady approach does, in fact, pay off. Does it take more time? Absolutely. But at the same time, I’m not in any situation where I 100% need the high levels of Japanese for anything. It’s also the closest thing to any sort of test that WILL measure your ability- and is available to the public at large. In other words- you study for a while and decided to jump straight to N2 or N1, and then you fail. You’ll probably very quickly go, “Oh shit, I suck at this language and just wasted a bunch of time and money.” Meanwhile, taking it at a lower level is more reassuring: “It’s not the high levels, but it means that I HAVE made progress!”
I took the old (pre-“N”) JLPT2 in about 1995 or 1996 without any of the lower levels, then took N1 in about 2015. Does that count?
I started with N2 and it was a good decision. JLPT prep is boring and formulaic as heck so it’s a good idea to start as late into your process of learning J as possible.