<p>After my son graduates with a BA in Asian History next year. He would like to go to Japan to continue studying his language skills. He plans to go to a 10 month program, the students can't work while attending so we will pay for it. He then plans on coming back to the US to go to grad school for Japanese Studies. </p>
<p>My question is which grad schools in the US have good Japanese programs besides Harvard? Or can someone point me in the right direction as to how to find out which colleges offer this. (I'd like to educate myself on this instead of asking my son a million questions, so I'll ask here!)</p>
<p>Also, do you think going away to Japan to study will help him get into grad school rather than if he applied right after graduation from undergrad? </p>
<p>Also, Is grad school admission as competitive as undergrad,does anyone not get accepted to a graduate school? He's a great undergrad student with a high GPA, but I worry that he won't get into grad school after we've supported him with his education expenses for 5 years. </p>
<p>Studying language in Japan won't hurt his admission chances, if anything it will help. Graduate school admissions are much more competitive than undergraduate. There was no mistake in supporting him for five years, that won't affect his chances. There are many things that factor in to graduate admissions. Check out the Grad School Admissions 101 thread at the top of this forum for more information.</p>
<p>Definitely Berkeley. Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, Stanford, as well as a few other schools all compose the top tier of graduate schools in the world for anything liberal arts related. Generally ide say in most instances there is no clear cut winner. However, I think in nearly everything Asian studies related, Berkeley has the edge over the rest, perhaps mostly due to the fact that not only is Berkeley's program insanely good, as is harvard's, etc, but it is also in perhaps the best location for such studies in the US. San Francisco is perhaps, at least for its size, the US's strongest trade city with Asia, specifically Japan and China. I believe Berkeley recently just finished building the largest East Asian Studies library outside of Asia, too.</p>
<p>Ide say student35s link pretty much lists all the grad programs worth going to. And for the most part it seems as though such rankings, which ide normally take with a grain of salt, are quite accurate in scope. </p>
<p>Personally I can only speak by experience about Chicago. I took a summer class in the dept. and it was incredible. I had the pleasure to meet a few other profs. in the East Asian dept. and they all seemed brilliant.</p>
<p>It depends on what your son is interested in studying. Does he wish to continue with history or go into literature? If he wants to go into history then Chicago is considered quite strong. As for literature, I would also recommend Columbia (one of my current professors received his PhD there).</p>
<p>It also largely depends on what period of Japanese history he wishes to study. UCLA has Herman Ooms, a specialist on Edo/Tokugawa era intellectual history, while Yale has excellent skills in Meiji and more modern literature. Columbia has a strong premodern literature department, and Berkeley is just strong all around. I'm not as familiar with Standford's program.</p>
<p>Thanks for all that info, it's nice to have a place to start. After he finishes in Japan he is planning to go to grad school to get his MA in Japanese Studies. He may be leaning toward business or law, or going for a Ph.D. I'm hoping he will get a better sense while he's in Japan. Looking through the graduate websites I get a sense that a lot of students don't know exactly what they want to do in their field of choice until they are into it a bit, which makes me feel a little better knowing this.</p>
<p>I would strongly advise against UC Berkeley's history program. While it does enjoy a very good ranking, currently many of the students in the Asian history grad program are not happy. The Asian history professors, with the exception of Barshay, can be extraordinarily difficult to deal with. While creating a challenging environment is certainly necessary, there is no excuse for the atmosphere of intimidation, elitism, and overt unfriendliness the professors here have created.
EALC, however, is a different story. The professors in this department are much more approachable and interested in mentoring students.
But above all else, no matter what university and what program (lit or hist), language ability is a must. This is the single biggest issue for many ill-prepared grad students is language. I would strongly recommend a good year or two (or three!) of intensive and dedicated language study. The language classes at berkeley are not intended for grad students, and they are not ideal. Moreover, both EALC and history professors have extremely high expectations for language ability.
hope this helps.</p>