Bit of background on me:
I’m 28, and live in the US, graduated high school in 2013. I had a lot of family issues in high school which had tanked my grades pretty bad. I went and retook the ACT a couple years ago and came out with a score of 24. Quick google search shows that at a 3.7 ish GPA, which feels fairly close to my ability.
Out of high school I worked a few random jobs before eventually getting lucky and turning my hobby of programming into a job. Since then I’ve been working the past several years as a freelance programmer, making fairly decent money; but I also live very frugally. Some years were tight, and some I was able to live very comfortably. I have about \~$115,000 in the bank right now. Also been to japan twice and loved it, but I know being a tourist and a resident are two different things. My ultimate goal is to move there long term; low crime rate, more affordable housing, great public transport/walkability, high trust society, being among my top reasons why.
I’m aware that there isn’t really any way for me to get a visa freelance, so my original pre covid plan was to try and apply to one of those english programs like SILS, PEAK, etc. Go for an undergrad, take the university japanese lessons, then graduate and shift over to a work visa with moderate language ability. Once covid hit I just wound up sitting on my ass and waiting for a few years, and ended up saving quite a bit more money (had a pretty successful project).
Now that I have a lot more savings, recently I’ve been considering doing a year at a language school before trying to apply for a university. It would give me a year of living in the country as a resident, not a tourist, so I could actually figure out if I want to fully commit. It would help fulfill the application requirement some of these universities have where you need a teacher or professor reference (been a decade since I graduated, doubt any of them even remember me, let alone actually recommend me with my horrible grades). I also heard that some of the japanese lessons for these university english programs aren’t the best and you won’t learn much.
Doing a year at a langauge school seems like a decent plan, but I’ve also seen some negative opinions about language schools.
I like to cover all my bases before I jump into something big so I wanted to see what feedback I could get here.
If you think it’s a solid gameplan, do you have any recommendations for schools? Currently scoping out tokyo since that’s the place I’m most comfortable with. Money isn’t really an issue, but I still do try and save as much as possible.
Is it a bad idea? Should I not even waste the time and money, and just try and apply for a university?
Thanks.
2 comments
This is a copy of your post for archive/search purposes.
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**Advice on language school and university**
Bit of background on me:
I’m 28, and live in the US, graduated high school in 2013. I had a lot of family issues in high school which had tanked my grades pretty bad. I went and retook the ACT a couple years ago and came out with a score of 24. Quick google search shows that at a 3.7 ish GPA, which feels fairly close to my ability.
Out of high school I worked a few random jobs before eventually getting lucky and turning my hobby of programming into a job. Since then I’ve been working the past several years as a freelance programmer, making fairly decent money; but I also live very frugally. Some years were tight, and some I was able to live very comfortably. I have about ~$115,000 in the bank right now. Also been to japan twice and loved it, but I know being a tourist and a resident are two different things. My ultimate goal is to move there long term; low crime rate, more affordable housing, great public transport/walkability, high trust society, being among my top reasons why.
I’m aware that there isn’t really any way for me to get a visa freelance, so my original pre covid plan was to try and apply to one of those english programs like SILS, PEAK, etc. Go for an undergrad, take the university japanese lessons, then graduate and shift over to a work visa with moderate language ability. Once covid hit I just wound up sitting on my ass and waiting for a few years, and ended up saving quite a bit more money (had a pretty successful project).
Now that I have a lot more savings, recently I’ve been considering doing a year at a language school before trying to apply for a university. It would give me a year of living in the country as a resident, not a tourist, so I could actually figure out if I want to fully commit. It would help fulfill the application requirement some of these universities have where you need a teacher or professor reference (been a decade since I graduated, doubt any of them even remember me, let alone actually recommend me with my horrible grades). I also heard that some of the japanese lessons for these university english programs aren’t the best and you won’t learn much.
Doing a year at a langauge school seems like a decent plan, but I’ve also seen some negative opinions about language schools.
I like to cover all my bases before I jump into something big so I wanted to see what feedback I could get here.
If you think it’s a solid gameplan, do you have any recommendations for schools? Currently scoping out tokyo since that’s the place I’m most comfortable with. Money isn’t really an issue, but I still do try and save as much as possible.
Is it a bad idea? Should I not even waste the time and money, and just try and apply for a university?
Thanks.
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Just get your degree first and then look for jobs in Japan. Whether you try to get a job from abroad, or go to language school and look for work during your time there, that’s up to you. You have more than enough savings so that’s great!
Since you don’t have a bachelors degree you won’t be able to get a work visa, so even if you went over to a language school on a student visa, you wouldn’t be able to get the work visa unless you have 10 years of verifiable work experience as a software engineer.
Look into WGU if you want to get a degree here in the states btw you’ll save more time and money.
If you get your degree in japan, so that will be 1 year of language school and 2 or 3 years (however long senmongakkou is)…so that will be potentially 3-4 years on a student visa where you can only work part time & not working as a software dev. Unless, you want to want to use your savings on that, I think in your situation I would do an online Software Engineering or Computer Science degree here in the states (using WGU as an example, its $4kish for every 6 months). So if it took you a year to finish WGU, that’s 8k for 1 year compared to you going to senmongakkou in Japan and having to pay for all that tuition and rent & expenses. Now after you finish that, you will have an accreddited degree from the states, and the whole process will be much smoother for you after that if you have a B.S. degree.
Whats your japanese level right now and how many years have you been working as a dev? If your Japanese level is low I’m not sure if 1 year of language school would be enough time to transition over to a senmongakkou or university enviroment tbh.