14th January – 睦月

センター入試　（sentar-nyuushi）

On one Saturday and Sunday in the middle of January, the entry exam for universities is held for 3rd year high school students. This exam has all the same questions for everybody and depending on the points from that exam, Japanese universities will allow students to join the uni. Therefore, the result of this exam might change the student entire life.

This exam is mostly mark sheet style and it was introduced in 1979.

Around 500,000 high school students take this exam at the same time in each venues located in all the prefectures.

well-known universities usually set the high mark for the entry.

There is another way to get into the university called AO入試 (Ei-Oh-nyuushi), using the personal skills, grades and interviewing without the exam. In this case, students have to have an outstanding history while in high school.

Why do Japanese care about the name value of the university?

This is because people who graduated well-known universities has higher possibilities to get a better job after graduation. Therefore, basically if you could get a great mark and get into the famous uni, your future in Japan is almost guaranteed.

Even it is believed that Japanese university is hard to get in but easier to graduate.

In fact, many famous companies in Japan prefer to hire students who are graduated from well-known university, moreover there are companies where set the requirement for the students that they only hire people graduated from ***University.

Unlikely to the other countries, Japanese have a typical career path after the university. Generally speaking, Japanese students start seeking career from 3rd year of university (total degree completion takes 4 years), and most of the people wishes to gain job during 4th year so they can start working right after graduating University. April every year are the set time frame for all the fresh graduates to start jobs.

Many Japanese companies have this newly graduate hiring position, and they see the students’ potential rather than their related experience. It is great for graduates that they can get into the famous companies without experiences but some people wonder it is better to hire people who have related experience so they can reduce the training cost and time.