The first questions to ask yourself are:
Are you interested in studying abroad, and why?
What are you interested in studying? Why?
Students have different starting points. Some students already have certain reasons for studying abroad, and they are clear about what they want to study at a foreign university. Perhaps other students have not yet decided. If you are among 'the undecided', these steps will help you to make some starting decisions.
A student's experience: When I started finding information about studying abroad, some of my seniors who had experienced studying abroad for a year as exchange students told me that it was really important to find what I wanted to study at a foreign university. They said, "The purpose of studying abroad is first of all studying, and you are going to spend a year or half a year doing that." After they told me this, I started seriously considering what I wanted to study, by thinking over my experiences and interests. In my case, I was interested in the environment and had got a lot of experience doing research from doing International internship course.
These online and physical links will help you think about your interest in studying abroad:
Visit this consultation and information area for studying abroad, located on 1F at the new Myogadani building
Partner universities in other countries
Chuo student experiences of studying abroad
A student's experience: "After I found an interesting field, I looked through partner university information (What departments are there? What courses do they offer?). You can get the information at different places like the Student Hub in Myogadani, from Chuo University's website, or foreign university websites. What I did next was choose two to three universities which offered courses which were interesting for me, and I compared them with each other. Then I tried to decide on one university."
A different student's experience: "I had already started thinking about studying abroad when I was a high school student and at that time I looked through the "tobitate" website of Monkasho. When I came to Chuo, I read some of the reports by students who had already studied abroad. This helped me start to think that studying abroad would be possible. Later I talked with some of my English teachers, as well as my first-year seminar teacher. Then I started doing some web searches to get more ideas, searching for information with key words like "study abroad" and "UK" in English and Japanese. These searches let me find out about a study abroad fair in Tokyo. I went to the fair and got some specific ideas for studying in England."
So some key starting questions are:
Are you interested in STUDYING abroad (not just GOING abroad!)?
What do you want to study?
Are you sure you can't study it at Chuo or learn about it from books in Japan?
Have you visited the Resource Center in Building 6 or the International Center in Building 11 to get information?
Have you tried talking with any teachers at Chuo about your ideas? Which teachers would it be good to talk with? Why?
Have you done any web searches on studying abroad? What key words would you use for your web searches? Why?
Is the university that you are thinking of going to be good for deepening your academic knowledge and understanding? Why? Why not?
>>> What are your starting ideas for studying abroad?
It is really important to consider about the different types of study that you can do. Chuo University offers two types of studying abroad: exchange study abroad and private study abroad. Second, you need to decide whether you want to do long-term or short-term study abroad. Will you study abroad 1 semester or 2 semesters?
These two decisions are related to the cost of study and your life after studying abroad, for example, job hunting and examinations. Chuo University offers useful web information and a guidebook to explain these two points:
>>> What is the best choice for your study plan?
Money may one of the biggest questions for students who want to study abroad. Some institutions offer scholarships for you, which can help you with the financial costs of studying abroad, for example:
The above links are just a few examples of different scholarships available within Japan. Feel free to search for other possibilities.
The Faculty of Law also offers different types of scholarship for studying abroad. Please use this link to find out about "yaruki" scholarships:
>>> What scholarships could you apply for?