The Dark Side of Japan

Center Shiken: Unnecessary Competition for University Entrance in Japan

Last weekend there was a famous central standardized national examination in Japan called Center Shiken. Shiken means test or examination in Japanese. This is a national test for mainly high school students who are willing to enroll at universities in Japan. It consists of 8 different sets of subjects and it's something that is similar to the SAT in the US. But definitely there are more subjects which students need to deal with.

It takes place every year January and each prefecture has its own exam center where students can take the exam. It's divided into 2 days where different subjects are dealt. It's also nationwide exam and they begin at the same time nationwide so it's a huge event for many high school students.

If a student fails to score high on this exam, they will have to wait for a year to take the exam. There's no pass or fail to this test but if students want to go to well known prestigious universities in Japan they are expected to score above 90% for all subject.

Now this exam is very tough as you can imagine, there's no flexibility to this exam. There's also no score choice option so you'll have to excel all subjects at once.

Many students get out of their mind because of this exam and so much preparation and pressure which comes with it.

It's unhealthy for many young students, but I'm glad that the government is going to replace this exam in the future to a different one which sounds better than this style.

This exam is used for university admission and in order to take the entrance exams for each university, students must score at least 80% or above score and even they score that they'll have to take another exam at each university which I find so competitive. For national universities, often the minimum score for taking the entrance exam is 90% or above.

This is called unnecessary competition.

Why on earth is the entrance requirement such a pain in the ass? Yet interestingly, for returnees or international students there are other types of entrance admission which does not require procedure of all those exams listed above. Unfair, it's the only word I can describe the admission. For private universities, many do not have this center examination as an admission requirement, therefore many who excel on certain subjects tend to aim for private universities in Japan.

Despite all complicated and competitive game on entering universities, it is interesting that almost all students lose their motivation for learning after enrolling at universities and eventually even stop going to university. This is my all time question, why the hell do all those students all of sudden get so lazy? They have been preparing and studying like hell to get into their preferred universities and then lose motivation? I don't understand.