I was wondering if anyone had experience with getting a masters degree in English in Japan and how the quality was. I’m looking mainly at schools in tokyo (UTokyo, Waseda, TiTech), and I’ve vaguely heard that Waseda is a good school for international students, but the graduate level is definitely different than undergrad.
To be honest, the reason I want to do this in Japan is because I’ve been considering there or Germany for a place where I can get my masters and immerse myself in a language in learning, so I don’t really wanna hear about how American degrees are more valuable.
I’ve heard that the schools aren’t recognized as much outside of Asia, but all it takes is a quick google search to see. Plus as long as it’s not a completely unknown or bad school, I’ve never had employers care about my uni so much as the classes I’ve taken and projects I’ve done. I probably will go back to the US afterwards because the salaries are hard to beat.
With that in mind, if anyone had experience with these schools/programs I’d love to get a feel for it, both the program itself and how the school is for intl students
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This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Considering English-based MS CS in Japan**
I was wondering if anyone had experience with getting a masters degree in English in Japan and how the quality was. I’m looking mainly at schools in tokyo (UTokyo, Waseda, TiTech), and I’ve vaguely heard that Waseda is a good school for international students, but the graduate level is definitely different than undergrad.
To be honest, the reason I want to do this in Japan is because I’ve been considering there or Germany for a place where I can get my masters and immerse myself in a language in learning, so I don’t really wanna hear about how American degrees are more valuable.
I’ve heard that the schools aren’t recognized as much outside of Asia, but all it takes is a quick google search to see. Plus as long as it’s not a completely unknown or bad school, I’ve never had employers care about my uni so much as the classes I’ve taken and projects I’ve done. I probably will go back to the US afterwards because the salaries are hard to beat.
With that in mind, if anyone had experience with these schools/programs I’d love to get a feel for it, both the program itself and how the school is for intl students
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Grad school in Japan is very heavily research based. Even as a Masters, you only take classes for one year, and not very many at that.
At my school in my department (which is also CS), there is no difference between the global course and the standard course except for slight differences in the entrance exam process. There are classes in both English or Japanese and the students are free to pick either one. This is very different than undergrad.
As a Masters student, you will join a research lab day 1 (actually before day 1 because during the entrance exam, you are asked to pick a supervising professor and it’s always best to ask the professor before applying). The majority of your time will be spent doing research. It’s even a requirement to graduate to have a conference presentation in my department.
All of this is a long way of saying, you should pick the school based on the professor. School name only really matters if you want a job in Japan. To pick a school, search the schools that you are interested in and find a professor that meets your research interest the most.
As long as you can communicate with your professor, langauge doesn’t matter. Most CS professors are fluent in English because we have to write papers and do presentations in English at international conferences and journals.
Also, unlike some other countries, grad school is not paid with a stipend. There are scholarships though, the most famous of which is the MEXT scholarship. You should look into that scholarship if you want to go to grad school in Japan.