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So, I applied and, fortunately, I was accepted. But what happened next?

After I had suc­cess­ful­ly applied at the Inter­na­tion­al Office of the Ruhr-Uni­ver­si­ty Bochum, the nom­i­na­tion at the part­ner uni­ver­si­ty fol­lowed. In my case, the part­ner uni­ver­si­ty was the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tsuku­ba.

The nom­i­na­tion was done by the Inter­na­tion­al Office, but it also required some infor­ma­tion from me. I received the e‑mail ask­ing for this infor­ma­tion on March 17 and I was sup­posed to send back my answers by March 23. So, there was not much time left. How­ev­er, the required infor­ma­tion was not too com­plex to not be able to answer in that time. Still, it’s bet­ter to be ready to answer emails even on short term ;).

Required information

• I had to choose the pro­gram lev­el I would like to enroll in Tsuku­ba. I could choose between “under­grad­u­ate Pro­gram” or “Mas­ter’s Pro­gram”. Since I was in the 4th semes­ter of my bach­e­lor’s degree at that time, I chose the under­grad­u­ate pro­gram :).

• Sec­ond, I should choose my sta­tus at the uni­ver­si­ty. Either “exchange stu­dent” or “exchange research stu­dent”. For this choice, we received some fur­ther infor­ma­tion.
  • The sta­tus of “exchange stu­dent” (in Japan­ese, by the way, Toku­bet­su Choko­gaku­sei) is pos­si­ble for both under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate stu­dents. “Exchange stu­dents” can earn cred­its for cours­es they pass and can also have these cred­its trans­ferred. But the cred­it trans­fer depends on the fac­ul­ty. So, you have to ask indi­vid­u­al­ly to what extent a cred­it trans­fer is pos­si­ble! If you choose this sta­tus, you have to take at least 8 cours­es per week, which means a work­load of 600 min­utes.
    
  • The sta­tus of “exchange research stu­dent” (in Japan­ese: Toku­bet­su Kenkyu­gaku­sei) is only avail­able to grad­u­ate stu­dents. If you choose this sta­tus, you will do research under the super­vi­sion of an aca­d­e­m­ic super­vi­sor. Since you are doing research rather than tak­ing cours­es, you can­not receive cred­its here.

• Next, the choice of school/college at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tsuku­ba. A very excit­ing choice! I was asked to sub­mit my first and sec­ond choice (spoil­er: For­tu­naly, I got my first choice). Lists of Schools/Colleges for Bach­e­lor stu­dents and Master’s/ Doc­tor­al Pro­grams were send as well.
  
  Since I am in the under­grad­u­ate pro­gram, I can only tell you some­thing about the “under­grad­u­ate schools/colleges”. How­ev­er, I will link the list of “Master’s/Doctoral Pro­grams” that was sent to us: https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/academics/g‑list-since-ay-2020/.
  
  There were a total of 10 options between which I could choose. Here is also the link: https://www.tsukuba.ac.jp/en/academics/organization-ug-list/index.html. As a stu­dent of Japan­ese Stud­ies and His­to­ry, I was imme­di­ate­ly inter­est­ed in the first school: School of Human­i­ties and Cul­ture. With­in that, there were anoth­er three choic­es: Col­lege of Human­i­ties, Col­lege of Com­par­a­tive Cul­ture, Col­lege of Japan­ese Lan­guage and Cul­ture.
  
  I was most inter­est­ed in the Col­lege of Japan­ese Lan­guage and Cul­ture. How­ev­er, it should be not­ed that a good knowl­edge of Japan­ese is required. A proof in the form of the JLPT (Japan­ese Lan­guage Pro­fi­cien­cy Test) is required and Japan­ese knowl­edge com­pa­ra­ble to the JLPT N1 or N2 should be proven! (More infor­ma­tion about the JLPT will fol­low in this blog and will be linked here).
  
  So, if you want to enroll in the Col­lege of Japan­ese Lan­guage and Cul­ture, you have to take the JLPT before­hand and pay atten­tion to the dead­lines here. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I had already missed the dead­lines. But still, it would have been pos­si­ble for me to sub­mit a cer­tifi­cate from a lec­tur­er in Japan­ese Stud­ies. This cer­tifi­cate just had to con­firm that my knowl­edge of Japan­ese was equiv­a­lent to lev­el N1/N2. But in the end, I did­n’t have the con­fi­dence to do that because the cours­es are taught in Japan­ese with an high lev­el ;).
  
  I final­ly decid­ed to go to the Col­lege of Human­i­ties, since they also offer his­to­ry cours­es. My sec­ond choice was then the Col­lege of Edu­ca­tion (School of Human Sci­ences) because I prob­a­bly want to con­tin­ue with the Mas­ter of Edu­ca­tion after my Bach­e­lor stud­ies in Bochum.

• Stu­dents who have cho­sen “exchange research stu­dent” sta­tus should select a research super­vi­sor.

• Final­ly, I had to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about my stud­ies in Ger­many, in my case Bochum. I had to state my sta­tus at the Ruhr Uni­ver­si­ty (Bach­e­lor or Mas­ter) and in which year I am cur­rent­ly study­ing. Then, my fac­ul­ty in Bochum and with that the infor­ma­tion was com­plete.

Extra tips

Many of these infor­ma­tion were filled in quick­ly, but espe­cial­ly for the choice of the school one should take some time and think well. You should also take time to read every­thing care­ful­ly so that such infor­ma­tion as the required Japan­ese lan­guage skills are not missed.

If I had any ques­tions, I could always con­tact my Inter­na­tion­al Office coor­di­na­tor which I took advan­tage of. As in my exam­ple with the Col­lege of Japan­ese Lan­guage and Cul­ture. At first, I thought that it was not pos­si­ble for me to enroll there. Since, I had already missed the dead­line for the JLPT. Then, my coor­di­na­tor had asked at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tsuku­ba and because of that, it was pos­si­ble for me to sub­mit the cer­tifi­cate of a lec­tur­er. There­fore, the tip, con­tact your coor­di­na­tor and just ask. Maybe, there is still a pos­si­bil­i­ty :).

So and with these tips I close this sec­ond part of my prepa­ra­tion and hope I could help you.