How Japanese University Entrance Exams Really Work The Toughest Test for High School Students

Welcome to Shima channel. Today want to talk about Japanese university entrance exams. lot of Japanese high school student spent several years preparing for these exams and for many of them it's one of the biggest events of their teenage years. How about in your country? Feel free to share in the comments. I'd love to hear about it. Let's start with an overview of how university entrance exams work in Japan. In Japan, if you want to go to university after finishing high school, you usually have to take an entrance exam. These exams focus heavily on region academic tests and your test scores often matters for more than essays, interviews, or extracurricular activities. In recent years, Japan has introduced more admission types such as recommendationbased exams or comprehensive evaluations that consider essays, interviews, and achievements. But even today, the traditional academic test is still the main pathway for most student. Next, let's break down the types of adversities in Japan and how the exam pattern differ. Japan has two major categories, national and public universities which are funded by the government and private universities. National and public universities tend to have lower tuition fees but the exams can be tougher. They are more required subject and the exams are often one shot only. Private universities usually cost more but they offer more exams opportunities. more campuses and more flexibility. To get into national university, student first take nationwide standardized test called the common test. Then each university gives its own secondary exams. Your acceptance is based on the combination of your common test score and your secondary exams result. The common test covers seven subject areas. Japanese, geography and history, civics, mathematics, science, foreign languages and information technology adding up to 21 possible subject. Most national universities require student to take around six subject across eight individual tests from this list. How the common test scores are used depend on the university. Some uses the score to decide who is allowed to sit for the secondary exam while others combine the score directory with their own exam result to determine acceptance. The secondary exam is specialized depending on the faculty you're applying to. For science majors, it's often math, foreign language, and science subject. For humanities majors, it might include foreign language, math, Japanese, and social studies. The specific subject varied by university While the Common Test is often race against time. The secondary exam tended to be much more difficult and requires deeper academic understanding. Another challenge is that almost all national universities hold their secondary exams on the same day. So you can't apply to two national universities in the same year. You only get one chance because of the wide range of required subject and the difficulty of the secondary exams and the limited test date. Getting into national universities can be extremely challenging. Private universities set their own exams format and the students can apply to many different universities and department. Some private universities allow student to apply using only part of their common test result while others offer subject combinations like math, English, science for science majors. The format varies widely. Private universities also offer multiple exam dates for the same department. So student can retake exams as many times as they need, at least as long as they are willing to pay the application fees. Speaking of fees, private and university application fees can be expensive, often around 30,000 yen per application. For student applying to many universities, this cost adds up quickly. For high schools that focus heavily on getting student into good universities, their university acceptance record is extremely important. It reflect the school's reputation and helps attract new students. When was in high school, there were sometimes rumors that few schools try to make their acceptance results look better than actually were. For example, heard stories about school paying application fees for small number of students and encouraging them to apply to several well-known private universities just to increase the number of successful acceptances listed in the school record. don't know how common this actually was and have no idea whether it still happens today, but at least back when was student, this kind of story was occasionally talked about among classmates. Student who aim for national university usually apply to several private universities as backups. Depending on their common test score, they might change their target scores or increase the number of safer options. One challenge is the private university acceptance result and tuition deadlines often come earlier than the national secondary exams. So even if student doesn't plan to attend private university, they might still have to pay large enrollment deposit sometimes tens of thousands of yen—just to keep their spot until national university results come out. For many student this becomes significant financial burden. Japan also had something known as ronin. This refers to student who don't go straight to university after high school and instead spend full extra year preparing to try again. Some student choose this because they firmly want to get into dream university. Others didn't get the results they hoped for in their final year of high school. Many Ronian student attend the large prep schools and they study all year long. So while some student enter university right after graduating high school, others take gap year dedicated entirely to exam preparation. Now let's talk about how high school life in Japan connects to university entrance exams. Many Japanese high schools published detailed record showing how many of their students got accepted into which universities. Because of this, university acceptance result can be major factor in how score is evaluated. Student who want to attend top universities often choose high schools known for strong academic performance. In these schools, high school rankings and university outcomes are tightly connected. In schools that emphasize university preparation, student might be sorted into different classes as early as the first or second year of high school based on their grades or mock exam result. Higher performance student are placed in advanced classes where lessons move faster and homework and exams become more difficult. Many student also attend cram schools or large prep schools after regular classes or on weekends. These places help student to string some week subjects or prepare for specific universities using past exam questions. actually attended school that was sometimes called self-proclaimed competitive school. The curriculum there was incredibly intense and introduced it in another video. So if you're curious, please check that one out, too. By the way, how much do high school student in your country usually study? And cram schools or prep school common where you live? Let me know in the comments. always enjoy hearing these differences. Today gave an overview of how university entrance exams work in Japan. In Japan and in some other parts of Asia, university admissions still rely heavily on academic testing, especially for the top schools. As result, competition can be become extremely intense. In future videos, would like to cover more detailed topics. So, hope you will continue watching. Thank you so much for watching today's video. If you have any questions or if you'd like to share your own experiences, please feel free to leave comment below. always enjoy reading your messages and hearing your perspective. Your feedback really helps me improve, not just with my videos, but with my English, too. See you next time.