Hey everyone! I figured I could get some things started on here, however little there may be at the time, about my preparation status and a little bit about me 🙂 (If you don’t wanna know about me, skip this next paragraph and it gets more into the program info.)
To start off, I’m a junior at PSU, majoring in Japanese and Asian Studies with a minor in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). I’m from Brockway, PA (1.5 hrs NW of State College), a tiny town of about 3000 that most people have never heard of. I’ve taken 2 years of Japanese, a few years of Spanish, and plan to eventually extend my language learning to a few others (Korean, Chinese, French, and some others).
I’ve been accepted to the Tokyo – Intensive Language, year-long program. I’m trying to do a homestay, though I won’t find out about that for awhile as we get our housing assignments about a month before the program starts. The start date is Aug 31, which involves general orientation, class registration, moving in, etc. I just got my ticket and finished all my IES paperwork, so I’m set on that front.
Since studying in Japan is very expensive, especially for a year, I’m attempting to get some summer work (though, around here, it’s not very easy) and save up a bit. My first piece of advice, while somewhat obvious, is to apply for scholarships early and make sure you get as many done as you can. There are a ton of opportunities through PSU to get financial aid, you just have to know where to look and who to ask (David is a great person to start with 😛 ). Figure out the requirements for all of them early and stay on top of the deadlines. I didn’t do the first part and had to ask my professors a couple times for letters of recommendation (a lot of scholarships request one or more).
I’ve also been looking into possibly working part time while in Japan, maybe as an English tutor or something along those lines…I’ll have to wait until I start my visa stuff to see how much extra paperwork that’ll take.
Another thing I can recommend is to take your time when buying your ticket. Depending on the site you use, when you buy your ticket for, etc. you can save a few hundred bucks. IES recommends statravel.org, studentuniverse.com, and some other sites in the acceptance handbook you get from them. These sites are specifically for students and offer discounts and flexibility with round trip tickets. Since you have to extend the date of your round trip ticket to fit it into the academic year (AY) program anyway, try for some different ‘return’ months to see when is the cheapest. As far as I’m aware, the cost to change your ticket is the same no matter how big of a time difference the change is, so that can save you some money as well.
Something to be aware of when looking into an AY program is that over your winter break, you will have no housing assignment (i.e. can’t stay with your host family), so you will have to arrange something yourself. You may be able to get housing in the dorms, though this isn’t guaranteed. What I’m doing is getting a few friends that are doing the same program as me and we are going to look into hostels or any other form of short-term housing and split the cost. As to how well this will actually work out, I don’t know. I’ve heard of problems with sharing rooms in Japan… I’ll talk more about that as I find out more information.
That’s all I can think of for now, I’ll update sometime later on!
Location: Brockway, Pennsylvania
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Hey! How’s it going? 🙂
Summer’s been pretty slow so far…having trouble finding enough work to save up money 🙁
Those guest houses sound interesting…I’ll have to look into that. Would be SUUUUPER cheap.
Yeah, I just got it on Monday. Trent just got his tonight. We got the same flight 🙂 7 AM! D:
Hey Andrew ^^ How’s your summer going? Since I’ll be staying for a year as well, I’ve done a bit of research. There are places that rent for like 300 dollars a month known as Guest Houses. Some give you single rooms, but others will stick you in a room with 6 or so beds, a shared kitchen, etc, with other foreigners. It’s usually the cheapest method imo. They come with internet and stuff to, but you have to prepare your own meals, etc. If I can stay in the dorms though, I’m going to shoot for that.
Did you buy your plane ticket yet? I haven’t >