Sodai.org

Getting in: The Interview

2010-01-20T02:53:35-08:00

In my previous post, I covered applying to SILS. After you submit your application, you have an agonizing wait until you get the results of your document screening. I probably mentioned this already, but the application process has two main parts: the document screening and the interview. After both of these, some people make the cut, and some people get turned down. Those who make it past the interview get accepted. I'll be talking about the interview process in this post.

Summary of the Interview Process

Hour-long essay writing test, choice of prompt from a list of 3.
20 minute long interview with SILS faculty via teleconference.

But first, I'll talk a little about your chances.

What are your chances of getting in? Take a look at the applicants results page. This gives you a run-down of how many people got through each part in past application periods. You can see that most people get eliminated during the document review. So if you actually get an interview, you have a high chance of being accepted.

I don't know whether the interviews for the upcoming application period will be the same as the one I experienced, or even whether all applicants undergo a similar interview process. It could be totally different for you, but I'll describe how mine went down.

Eventually a package was express mailed to me. Hoping for the best, I tore it open and found two documents. One congratulated me on passing the document review and gave me the info on when my interview and writing test would be. Wait, writing test, what the hell? I didn't expect to have one of those. The other was a little postcard with my name and application number and other things on it, my "AO Admission Card". I've still got that thing, apparently I'll be exchanging it when I get to Tokyo for my real student ID.

I was relieved that I had passed the document review, but now this interview gave me more to worry about. So I worried until the interview came, and in the meantime I bought some nice clothes and tried practice interviewing myself in my head, imagining questions they might ask.

My interview took place in the Waseda Oregon Office at Portland State University, where I was attending classes at the time. I barely arrived on schedule, and a nice man escorted me to what looked like his office. He had two desks set up, and I sat in the one prepared for me. In the other one, I was surprised to find a girl who was also applying to SILS. She was also dressed way nicer than me, which made me a little nervous.

I was handed a schedule, and it was then that I figured out the true structure of the interview. We would wait and do nothing for 30 minutes, then there was a 1 hour long writing test, and then we would wait some more before we each had our separate interviews, hers first. Altogether I think it was 4 hours or so.

The test would be an essay test. We had one hour to write an essay. When the writing test began, I was given a choice of 3 prompts to write about. The first one was a Napoleon quote and something about history being a set of lies believed by everyone, the second one was an excerpt from Hamlet and a question I didn't even bother reading because there was no way in hell I was going to analyze Shakespeare on the spot, and the third was a prompt to write a persuasive essay about whether specialization (like college majors) should begin earlier in the whole education process. I definitely didn't want to do the Hamlet one, and I figured the third one was a trick question because SILS itself doesn't look like it's specialized, and by process of elimination I decided on the first prompt. Luckily, my history teacher in high school made us learn about historiography, so I just wrote a quick outline and then lots of crap about that. I think I filled 4 pages and had 10 minutes left to go over what I wrote and correct things. I've had the generic essay format drilled into my head since elementary school, so I followed it: introduction with thesis, 3-ish supporting paragraphs with specific examples, conclusion that references all the junk I already talked about. Done. I was feeling good about myself because I thought I had pulled together a pretty decent essay.

After that we waited around for a while until our interview times were. I had the chance to talk with the girl who was also applying. It turns out she had flown here from Nevada! And all this time I had thought she was from Portland too, or at least somewhere close like Seattle. No wonder she had such fancy clothes on. I guess this means that you'll be expected to fly out for the interview if you're not lucky enough to live near the interview spots.

I was still worried about the interview. I had all these dumb questions flying around my head. Should I speak Japanese first? Should I shake their hands or bow or both?! Are there any weird Japanese interview rituals I should have known about? (I actually had asked my Japanese teacher if there were, and she told me to put my hands in my lap and sit up straight, because it made me look respectful, or something.)

Our Waseda guy explained to us that the interview would be taking place via teleconference, and I laid those worries to rest. The girl got interviewed first, and I worried some more until it was my turn, and then I really worried. It was probably the most nervous moment of my life. So nervous, in fact, that my brain kind of went on autopilot and I honestly don't remember lots of specifics about the interview, but I'll do my best in describing it.

Once it was my turn, I was led to a television with a webcam type thing on the top of it, and on the TV I saw two SILS professors. They were white, so I didn't bother with any of the Japanese niceties I had spent so long studying in my Japanese class, lest I look like an idiot. We greeted each other, and they began grilling me.

They asked me a lot of questions. "Why Japan?" "Why Waseda?" They asked what I wanted to study, what subjects I was interested in, what I planned to do after college, stuff like that. They talked about my essay, too. It was kind of the jumping-off point. I don't know if I just got really really lucky, or if they pick professors to interview you who best match, but they ended up being linguistics and literature guys. Linguistics and translation is my main interest, and I had namedropped Kawabata's Snow County in my essay, so I had the perfect people to interview me. They asked me a few random questions about my favorite aspect of linguistics, studying Japanese ("what's the most interest part of Japanese? the hardest?"), etc. I got to say "Proto-Indo-Europoean" which probably made me look smart. It seemed like the literature professor was testing me on whether I thought Japan was actually like Snow County, like I guess if I thought I could go to small snowy villages and get in weird sexual relationships with geishas? I had to demonstrate that no, I was more interested in modern Japan, but I wouldn't mind visiting a snowy little village some day.

I always have trouble answering why I want to go to Japan. I have lots of reasons, some better than others. I stuck with wanting a career that had to do with mastering a language, or something. I would recommend practicing answers for these types of questions. Anyway I managed to answer all of the questions they threw at me. Like I said, my brain was on auto-pilot so I was kind of just saying things that came to mind. I bet if I watched a recording of me it would be embarrassing and hilarious. After they stopped questioning me, they asked if I had any questions. Of course I did! I asked them 3 questions. Something about jobs/grad school, something about the circles, and something else but I remember it being pretty good. They were questions that I kinda already knew the answer to but I wanted to demonstrate that I had been seriously thinking about things. I think the questions I asked really helped me, and I even used one to do some damage control on a question I had poorly answered earlier. They seemed pretty impressed at my questions, but after the third one they let me go. If you can glean one piece of advice from this post, come up with some genuinely good questions to ask the interviewers!

After my interview, I headed home, and replayed all the dumb stuff I had said over and over in my head. I think that's about it! Please feel free to ask me about the interview by commenting here, and I'll answer the best I can. If there are any SILS students reading this, it would also help for you to share your interview experience.

Getting in: Applying to SILS

2009-11-05T11:58:16-08:00

Hello everyone! I'm Greg, a new writer for Sodai.org. I'll begin attending SILS in the April 2010 term, and I thought I ought to keep one of the few English-language SILS resources alive and kicking. I know that a lot of people have questions about the application and enrollment process, so I can't think of a more fitting series of articles to start with. The SILS application process probably had the greatest number of hoops that I've ever had to jump through in order to accomplish something. Luckily, the SILS admissions office is relatively flexible and helped me fix my mistakes. But why make mistakes when you can read about mine and avoid them?

Most colleges in America have fancy online applications these days. SILS prefers to keep it old-school and your first step is compiling a large number of documents and mailing them during the application period. The application process has two stages: if you pass this step, you'll be interviewed and tested, and then you might get accepted. Most people get eliminated in the first step (this one!) so be very careful. Take some time to familiarize yourself with the For Applicants section of the SILS website, because you'll be going there a lot. The next term open for applications is Fall 2010, and I'll be using it in my examples. Although the first application period for Fall 2010 doesn't begin until January 7, it's a good idea to begin assembling your application now, or at least a month before. You want to apply early so that you have time to correct any mistakes you might have made and get the corrected documents mailed before you're out of luck.

This was my completed application. It really is a large number of documents.

The application process is explained in-depth in the Application Guide in English. It's a huge PDF file chock full of information, rules, and sometimes oddly specific instructions. Be sure to read this! It's very important, and I get the feeling that part of the admissions criteria is following it as closely as you can. I'll cover all the applications documents in this post, but always double-check them in the Application Guide, which does change a little bit each term. The application guide goes into far more detail than I do.

The Application Documents Checklist is the first document to include in your application and also a handy way of keeping track of your progress. It lists all of the documents you need to include in the order you need to include them, so it's easy to organize your application around it. New in the Fall 2010 checklist is an Interview Questionnaire, where you mark a couple preferred interview locations. I'll write more about the interview process in my next post, but I interviewed in Portland, Oregon, a city not included in the questionnaire, so it's possible that they really will consider your write-in request.

The Application Form is the next document after your checklist to include in your application. You can hand-write or type it, but I found it a lot easier to type. The Application Form is a general kind of college applications form where you fill out information about yourself, your educational background, academic honors, study abroad experience, and personal/volunteer activities. You also have to include a very specific 4x3 centimeter photo of yourself. I had some trouble with this, and ended up having to mail replacement photos twice. The first time my photos were rejected for not being clear enough because I just printed them on photo paper. Have a professional do them instead. The next time my photo didn't show enough of my face. Unlike a standard passport photo where you have a bit of your neck and shoulders in there, the photos for SILS should be pretty much entirely your head. Think of them as the kind of photos you'd put on a student ID, because that's what they are. It might be hard to find a place that takes these strange kinds of photos. I suggest trying a small-time passport photo place, these guys helped me out. Make sure to write your full name on the back of every photo. You'll have to include 2 more of the same photos later, and the same rules apply. The last three parts of the form are optional, and I don't know how important they are, but I would try to fill them as best as you can. Personally I wrote about 1 academic honor, 3 activities, and no study abroad experiences. Remember that you have to attach proof of your claims to the form and label them according to the reference number on the form. The proof has to have your name on it, and "certify your activities". I was lucky because my academic honor and one of my activities were covered in my transcripts, so I just wrote "(refer to my ___ transcript)" in the box they give you.

The next part of the application is the most difficult part, the English essay. It should be around 1000 12-point double-spaced words, and follow this prompt: "You should use your personal experience as the basis for your essay. Please feel free to describe not only what you hope to gain from studying at SILS, but also how you hope to contribute to SILS as an international community." To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what the last bit means, but I wrote mostly about my motivations for applying, and included a bit about how I like helping others out, too. The topics in your essay will most likely be a significant portion of your interview. Write about things you're prepared to discuss. The essay is also a great opportunity to talk about things you didn't have a chance to mention in the Application Form. For example, I couldn't mention my study abroad experience because it was too short to get transcripts from, but I was able to talk about how it influenced me in my essay. There's tons of resources for writing college essays, just be sure to make it your own. Have someone else read it through, too. It's surprising how many mistakes can slip through because you see what you expect to see when you read your own work. As a formality, put "The End" at the end of your essay, just like in elementary school! Also, label your pages if it's longer than 2. Mine was 3.

The next two documents are your certificate of (expected) graduation and academic transcript(s). Every school handles this slightly differently, and the Application Guide contains a list of acceptable document configurations. Read the guide carefully and make sure to get official transcripts and originals of everything. I have a bit of a non-traditional educational background (I "graduated high school early"), so I e-mailed the SILS admissions office beforehand asking them about my situation and got a quick response. You have to include transcripts from ALL schools you've attended! For some reason, they don't include this in the application guide but instead on the admissions website. Even though my final high school transcript had classes from my other schools listed on it, I still needed to include official transcripts from those schools. If you've taken college classes, you should include that transcript and a registration certificate. I ended up submitting a ridiculous amount of stuff for this, and collecting all of the transcripts took the most time out of anything. If you've only attended one high school, you're lucky.

Next you have to include some standardized test results. Depending on the country you're applying from, SILS has different requirements. These are explained in detail starting from page 20 in the application guide. I'm from the US, so I submitted my ACT scores. They recommend you take the SAT if you don't have anything to submit. I ordered my ACT results online, but they got lost in the mail or something, so I ended up having to scan them and send them to my admissions counselor, and then call the ACT and tell them to re-send it later. I'd recommend ordering your scores a day or two before you mail your application. If they end up taking a long time, call someone and figure out what happened.

That's it for the academic part of the application. Now you have to prepare lots of documents for immigration purposes. Download the Statement of Source of Funds, Written Oath for Defraying Expenses, and Curriculum Vitae and fill in everything that you can. I had to stealthily add a line to the Curriculum Vitae because I went to too many schools, but I don't think anyone cared. I figured it was better than lying. For some parts, you might need to have your benefactor (such as your parents) sign or write some stuff, just help them through it! You need to gather some proof of your funds. I went through Bank of America, and they mailed a letter of credit that I sent to SILS. SILS didn't accept it because it wasn't signed by a real person, so I had to go the bank manager and beg her to sign my piece of paper. By the way, they told me they don't accept monthly statements, so don't bother with those. The tricky part is the Application for Certificate of Eligibility. SILS gives you some directions and an example, follow these closely. Keep in mind you must print it on A4 paper! I guess this is some weird bureaucratic requirement, but it took me forever to find A4 paper. I just gave up and had FedEx/Kinkos print it out and cut it to A4. It was way expensive, try to find the paper and do it yourself. I also filled out the application by hand, which was hard because they barely give you any room to write stuff. Typing stuff is so much easier, especially since you can fix any mistakes you make very quickly, without having to re-write an entire page. You have to make and include a copy of your passport, which is simple enough. You also have to attach 2 of the photos we talked about earlier to the CoE application. Don't staple them. In fact, don't staple anything. They tell you to use paper clips in the application guide. I had to use a bull clip because my application turned out to be so frickin' huge. If you're a Japanese citizen or permanent resident, or someone who already has a Japanese visa, the process and required documents will be different for you. But if this is the case, you should already be familiar with immigration process!

That's all of the application documents. Double-check everything. Make sure everything is in order. Make sure you didn't staple. Make sure you wrote "The End" and numbered your pages on your essay if you needed to. Make sure you wrote your name on the back of all your photos. Make sure you printed the Application for Certificate of Eligibility on A4 paper. On your envelope, write "AO Entrance Examination <External to Japan> Application" in red ink. Why red? Does it matter if you don't write that in red? I have no idea! There's some more weird gotchas, carefully read through the application guide right before you mail everything. But, don't worry! If you screw something up, you'll be able to mail in corrected documents. Make sure you apply early to have enough time to correct things!

Apologies for the huge post, but I hope this will help some applicants with their first step. If you have any questions, drop me a comment or e-mail SILS admissions. In my next few blog posts, I'll cover your chances of getting in, the interview process, and the enrollment process.

The Future of Sodai.org

2009-08-13T17:22:42-07:00

I finished my one-year exchange at Waseda, and I'm not quite sure what to do with this site. I don't have a ton more to say about SILS, but I do think there's a place for uncut dialogue and commentary about goings-on at Waseda. I'm going to leave this blog as it is, and if anyone is interested in writing for it, comment here and I'll set you up with a free guest-author account. I won't exercise any editorial control over your posts (unless they're particularly obscene or slanderous), so go wild and turn this site into a cool resource for your fellow SILSians.

As for me, I'll still be blogging this year, but stuff will be a little more general and a little less Japan-focused. If you've got any random questions about life at Waseda, you can always email me at davidatdshackdotnet (changing the "at" and "dot" to the appropriate symbols).

Cheers, David Shackelford

Use Waseda Wi-Fi with Your iPhone or iPod Touch

2009-06-26T03:59:16-07:00

If you go to Waseda and have an iPhone or iPod touch, you know that the school's ridiculous network won't let you access the Waseda wireless network with your device. Waseda requires you to use both a VPN client and an HTTP proxy to get on the internet, and the iPod/iPhone can't do both simultaneously...until now.

Apple's latest iPhone OS (free for the iPhone, $9.99 for the iPod) finally fixes this problem, allowing you to associate an HTTP proxy from the VPN settings panel. You don't have to know what that means to get on the web, just follow these directions, and you'll be good to go:

From the home screen, click "Settings," then "General," then "Network," then "VPN." Fill in the settings as below, replacing "shakku@waseda.jp" and the password with your own campus login (same as your email account).

Under "secret," enter "group."

Click "save" and you should be good. Slide the VPN switch to "on," and you'll be able to access the web over wi-fi. The iTunes store doesn't work, presumably because it needs a secure connection, but email and other apps should be fine.

Scientists at Waseda Create Emotional Robot

2009-06-23T08:47:35-07:00

From Tokyo CBS:

A walking humanoid robot that is able to use its whole face and body to express emotion was unveiled on Tuesday in Japan. The robot was created by scientists at Tokyo's Waseda University and is thought to be the first of its kind according to its makers. It is able to express a range of different emotions, including happiness, fear, surprise, sadness, anger and disgust, by opening and closing its eyes, moving its lips and eyebrows, and using its arms and legs.

Yo, that is some scary shit. Full story here.

Eww....Midterms!

2009-05-27T09:06:40-07:00

It's getting to that disgusting time of the year again, that time when you actually have to make a semblance of an effort to pass your courses at Waseda. Pick your head off the desk, pay a bit of attention to the sensei, and cram it up, because it's midterm season!

If you're drowning in your classes, here are some tools to help:

Anki: this will change the way you memorize kanji. I owe my passing grade in Japanese to this.
Rikaichan: this will change the way you read Japanese online. I owe my job to this.
Leechblock: you can set your browser to lock yourself out of productivity-killers like Facebook and Twitter. Amazing.
Study Hacks: this will change the way you approach college as a whole. I wish I had known about this three years ago.

If you're still having trouble...sucks to be you! Seriously, though, eat well, sleep, don't stress, study ahead of time, and try to put the heavy drinking off until these stupid tests blow over.

Waseda University and The H1N1 Swine Flu

2009-05-24T02:57:32-07:00

Here's what Waseda first had to say about swine flu (all these notifications come to our email inboxes market "URGENT":

There has been confirmed cases of people being infected by the swine influenza in Mexico, the United States and several other countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that its pandemic alert level will be increased from Phase 3 (sporadic cases or small clusters of disease in people, but has not resulted in human-to-human transmission sufficient to sustain community-level outbreaks) to Phase 4 (verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause "community-level outbreaks") on April 27th.

If any confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission occur, Waseda University will cancel classes, close campus, and have students be on-call at home. Also any activities or extracurricular activities planned on-campus will all be cancelled.

Please make sure to take precautionary measures such as stockpiling essential items such as food and water.

Hmm...there are a couple hundred confirmed cases in Japan, but we still have classes. I'll bet you that once the flu shows up within the Tokyo city center (ie within the Yamanote line), they'll shut school for a week.

Now they're really swinging into action: if you have swine flu, they'll- wait for it- excuse your absence from class! Does this apply if you go and test negative, or only if you actually have it?

As previously announced, Waseda University is continuing to conduct classes, research and extracurricular activities as usual. Should developments with the influenza A (H1N1) epidemic make it necessary to suspend classes in the future, a formal announcement will be made to that effect. In the meantime, any students experiencing flu-like symptoms are urged to make contact with the special influenza advisory centers that have been established by Japanese authorities for that purpose. A list of such centers follows below. Should you feel ill and suspect that you may have succumbed to infection, please seek and follow medical advice. Refrain from coming to the university. In particular, please adhere carefully to any direction from a medical professional that you should recuperate at home and avoid contact with others. If diagnosed as likely to be suffering from the new strain of influenza please make contact with the Waseda University Health Support Center via telephone whilst remaining at rest at home or under medical supervision. Upon full recovery please present a medical certificate (Shindansho) to your host faculty or graduate school office and complete the relevant form for leave of absence from class (‘kesseki todoke’). When this formality has been completed, the University and your professors can then apply special consideration to your circumstances.

I guess I appreciate the sentiment, but what a painfully stiff email!

Waseda Bloggers

2009-05-20T01:26:04-07:00

People blogging Waseda:

Nate picks apart all the ramen and noodle shops in the Waseda/Takadanobaba area at Waseda Ramen
The other Nathan, an exchange student from Oregon, is A Gaijin in Tokyo
My buddy Eman blogs his crazy-awesome host family at Eman's Travel Blog, and also writes a gourmand's impression of Tokyo at College Kid's Cooking.
Evie's a British girl I had class with last semester. Find her at Evie in Japan.
Noah and Yuki double-team Tokyo at Lost Souls.
Sami, a pretty nifty Australian, writes Shinjuku Shining Star.
The Waseda Business Association is an excellent blog to follow if you're wondering about finding work or internships in Japan, or if you just want a student perspective on current Japanese business events.
The international circle 虹の会 (niji no kai) has a PR blog.
...and lastly, yours truly just kicked off a Tumblr blog to mix my photos into my longer posts. If you just want words, you can find those here, but my Tumblr mixes everything I do into one super-blog.

Non-Waseda, but still cool:

Allison studies at Keio and takes pretty pictures at 24:00
JapanSoc is a community for any and all Japan-related bloggers

Want to start your own blog? I use Typepad, but Tumblr's been growing on me a lot recently. You can also write for this blog if you'd like; we're looking for people to carry this on when we all go home or graduate.

Happy reading!

Waseda Grads in the News: Manabu Miyazaki

2009-05-03T06:41:13-07:00

As you might expect with one of the top schools in the nation, Waseda graduates often go on to do pretty cool things. Today's Japan Times has an article on one of our most interesting alumni, Manabu Miyazaki:

Miyazaki's life... has been nothing if not exceptional and eventful. Born as the second son of a yakuza boss in Kyoto, he grew up interacting with reckless but warmhearted members of the extended underworld "family," which also ran a demolition business.
Then, influenced by his left-leaning private tutor, he was won over to Marxism while in high school, and soon after he entered the prestigious Waseda University in Tokyo in 1965, he was busy networking, organizing and demonstrating as a member of the Japanese Communist Party in that decade's numerous, and often violent, student protests against "injustices," such as tuition-fee hikes and issues such as Japan's postwar treatment of its Korean residents.

However, like many others who were deeply involved in that movement, Miyazaki ended up dropping out of college. Then, after a brief stint as a reporter at a weekly magazine, he went back to Kyoto to take over the troubled family business, trying to meet one bank debt obligation after another.

Along the way, he says, desperation drove him to start getting involved in riskier business deals. The debts, though, kept growing, and the demolition company finally went bankrupt owing ¥2.5 billion on Oct. 25, 1980 — Miyazaki's 35th birthday. Persuading angry creditors to write off the debts exasperated him further, especially when some took to threatening him personally with swords and pistols. Then, in an unrelated incident, on one occasion in 1986 two gunmen stormed into a Kyoto cafe and shot him and the two men he was with. Though he recovered from the bullet that went through his stomach, his companions both died on the spot.

But Miyazaki's drama-packed life wasn't all bad during that decade in which Japan's asset-inflated bubble was growing at its most heady rate. In fact, he rode the wave in style, amassing huge sums — and spending lavishly — by landing one real-estate deal after another as a jiageya (land shark), whose job it is to nudge or intimidate individual owners of small parcels of land to sell them and make way for major property developers to move in.

The full article is worth a read- it goes on to interview the author about reactions to his autobiography, life in the underworld, and the place of organized crime in modern society.

Waseda Football Sokeisen: It's Football Time Again!

2009-04-27T03:07:00-07:00

Kanji lesson! Take the 早 from 早稲田, the 京 from 京王, and the 戦 from 戦争, and you get 早京戦, or soukeisen, the Waseda-Keio War! The game starts at noon this Wednesday, somewhere called Komasawa field. I actually have no idea where that is, but a girl named Jennifer has her contact info up on the Facebook event, and can probably get you there.

Reminder: Globalation Vol 2, our all-night club party in Roppongi, is also happening this Wednesday.