<p>My son is looking for small colleges with the best Asian Studies departments. He wants to continue the Japanese and Chinese he's taken all through high school and add Korean. Where would you recommend?</p>
<p>bump - my daughter is also looking for such a program</p>
<p>In terms of area studies, small colleges such as Amherst, Williams, Oberlin and other big named top 10 schools come in mind. But in all honesty, compared to large state and ivy league universities, these small colleges are significantly weaker. UNC Chapel Hill, for instance, has an Asian studies program that could easily beat Amherst, Williams, and Oberlin combined.
Area studies have long been funded by Uncle Sam; as a result, research universities tend to have a tremendous advantage when compared to small colleges.
Lastly, you should assess your son/daughter’s language skill before he/she applies to such programs, since he/she will be expected to compete with native speakers in high level classes. My Chinese literature class, for instance, is dominated by native speakers and heritage speakers.
An alternative would be studying in China for a year or two, and taking a degree in humanities emphasizing in East Asia. Beijing University and Tsinghua University in Beijing, China both offer FULL scholarships to all foreign students who want to study Chinese.</p>
<p>Thanks - may I ask which school you attend?</p>
<p>University of Maryland, College Park. My school has a *<strong><em>ty East Asian studies department, but have a heavily political, government funded second language acquisition and intelligence analysis scene. Unfortunately, our department is enough to beat ANY liberal art school’s East Asian department in terms of size, diversity, funding, and research.
Nuff said, but luckily enough, we have a few star faculties whom are very famous in their fields. Our neighboring schools: Georgetown, UVA, and others have even *</em></strong>tier or equally ****ty East Asian studies department with literally nonexistent Korean studies.
If you go to a, say, liberal art school, that probably ain’t gona even to happen. I personally know the influencing Chinese professors in America. They are all in big research universities. Area studies, again, is funded by Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam tends to throw bucks at research universities.
The best school to study Chinese literature and East Asia is Harvard, and it is not very difficult to get in there graduate school wise. I heard good things about other ivy leagues too(columbia is pretty awesome), but I personally would stay away from Princeton’s as away as possible, it is filled by old sinologists.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info!</p>
<p>^ I thought it was interesting you mention Princeton as a place to stay away from–I’ve heard from several professionals that it has the best Chinese language program in the country. What do you mean by “old sinologists”?</p>
<p>just curious. I’ve considered applying there for grad school in a couple of years.</p>
<p>Soka University in California specializes in Asian languages… its kind of a branch off of a university with the same name in Japan. I have been trying to do research on it, I might attend this Fall. Its super small- about one hundred freshmen. During junior year, you study abroad FREE!</p>