I'm currently an EU citizen with the following work/academic profile:
– Finished a bachelor degree in Computer Science with a 8.1/10 GPA from a university in the Netherlands
– Received a 10/10 grade for my undergraduate research thesis
– Currently 2 years of working experience at a big tech company as a software engineer (employer like Amazon/Google/Meta/Microsoft)
– Currently learning Japanese
I'm currently exploring paths to go to Japan. I'm not planning to move now, but e.g. more in 3-5 years. I'm considering:
1. Go for an internal transfer to work in Japan as a software engineer
2. Go back to university and explore academia path
I would like to evaluate the 2nd option. I'm thinking of doing a masters since I think going back to university with some years of experience might be very interesting and I would like to experiment with doing more research later on in life.
Some questions:
1. For becoming a graduate student, what level of Japanese is recommended? I understood that university on grad level is in English, but what level would you folks recommend besides that?
2. How competitive is entering e.g. graduate program in Tokyo or Kyoto? Anything I need to keep in mind for Japanese universities? I found that universities in Japan mostly care about research fit. I don't have any publications, but I have a good grade for my undergraduate thesis which hopefully helps.
3. How is international/national ratio in those universities?
4. If I understand correctly, university fees for internationals are equal as for nationals? It was around 500,000 Japanese Yen a year for e.g. University of Tokyo. I was quite surprised by this fee since I'm used to high fees in EU for international students.
5. I would go back to university after some years of experience, is this something that they would be ok with?
by mochiimochii1