After being accepted
Japanese preparatory education
MEXT students who have been decided that their Japanese proficiency is not enough to study and research in Japan will be required to spend the first semester attending Japanese language courses offered at the Center for Language Education and Research of Sophia, and then take subject courses at the graduate schools.
Nevertheless, Japanese language courses are not mandatory for those students who wish to enroll in the English based graduate programs where they are not required for Japanese proficiency for their research.
MEXT students who are nominated through ASCOJA(ASEAN Council of Japan Alumni) are required to spend the first 6 months studying Japanese courses at the JASSO Tokyo Japanese Language Education Center, and then enroll at Sophia university and take subject courses at the graduate schools.
The first course and status at Sophia University
Generally, MEXT students selected under the Embassy Recommendation category will enter the university as Research students.
If the student takes the desired graduate program’s entrance examination for Degree students and is accepted to the program before coming to Japan, he/she can enroll as a Degree student from the beginning.
However, almost all MEXT Scholarship students start at Sophia as Research Students and take one or two semesters to prepare for Master’s/PhD program enrollment.
The main reason for this process is that as the final results for the MEXT scholarship selection usually are not released at the time of Degree admissions, and students need to pay the full tuition amount by the matriculation deadline, as with the other privately-funded international students. The paid amount can be refunded later if the student is granted the MEXT scholarship and placed at Sophia University, however, if he/she is not selected as a MEXT student nor placed at Sophia University, it cannot be refunded.
Entrance to a Master’s / Doctoral program
We strongly recommend you to carefully read the application guide of graduate schools you would like to enroll in before coming to Japan. That is because you may be required to submit a “Certificate of Graduation” and the certificate of language proficiency, and so on during the application period. It will be much easier for you to prepare them in your country than in Japan.
The information on admission is available in Admission page of Sophia Website.
各種情報 / Information
上智大学大学院の入学試験情報 / Admission information for Sophia graduate programs
https://www.sophia.ac.jp/jpn/admissions/in_ad/index.html(日本語 Japanese)
https://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/admissions/graduate_p/index.html(英語 English)
上智大学の大学院情報 / Information of graduate programs