Speaker 1: Hi everyone, my name is Linda, but you can also call me Sakarihime. And if you can't tell by my channel name already, I am a really big fucking weeb. And I base off my entire personality on the fact that I lived in Japan for about a year. If you're clicking on this video, you're probably thinking, how did this dumb bitch study in Japan for free? Did I have a sugar daddy? No. But if you are interested, my DMs are open. Today I'll be talking about how I studied in Japan for free through... A really long drum roll. Scholarships. This is definitely going to be a very long video. I have listed the timestamps here and in the description box below. Where was your study abroad university? In 2018, I studied abroad at the International Christian University located in Mitaka, Tokyo. The Japanese pronunciation of that is the Kokusai Kristokyo Daigaku. How did you enroll into this university? I originally found out about ICU through my home university, which is the Ohio State University. Being a Japanese accounting major, the department really pushes you to try and broaden your horizons by studying abroad. ICU was one that was definitely on my list. I talked to my professor. He personally thought that ICU has one of the best Japanese language programs within central Tokyo. And I really wanted to be in an environment where I could meet a lot of Japanese people, but also have a lot of international friends. Let's talk money. Here's the budget sheet that my university gave me. Roughly around $10,000 is spent on tuition. And they estimated that you would need about an additional $15,000 for room and board, airfare, some visa costs, and personal expenses. GPA and stats. I had a 3.98 GPA. I was a first generation college student. I was the president and founder of a student-based volunteer organization here at Ohio State called Buckeyes for Baking. And I worked in Japan for about three months for a summer internship. Hello. I just wanted to say that you don't have to have the same stats as me in order to win a lot of scholarships. Everyone has different experiences and circumstances. So it's not fair to compare yourself to some random internet person. I've had friends who have never left the States before, had zero internship experience. But because of the fact that they showed on their essays that they were so passionate about learning Japanese, they were able to be fully funded also. So keep that in mind. Yeah, that's about it. So continue. To even be qualified for your study abroad programs to your university, most schools require you to have a 3.0 GPA or higher. But with that being said, if you want to be a competitive applicant and get a lot of scholarships, I'd recommend that you stay in the 3.5 GPA range or higher. What was your timeline? So in August, a year before I left, I met with my advisor to determine what university I wanted to study at, which was obviously ICU. From September to October, I gathered all the information on these scholarships that I could qualify for and put all this in an Excel sheet that I'll talk about a little bit later. From November to December, this is where I basically sat my ass down and worked on all my scholarship essays. So basically, I was at a coffee shop for the entire winter break every day for about two to three hours, typing out like 10 different scholarship essays. What scholarships did you apply to? So I applied to the Fund for Education Abroad Scholarship, the Bridging Foundation Scholarship, the US-Japan Council Watanabe Scholarship, the Jasso Scholarship, which is basically a scholarship through ICU, the Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship, and a lot of local university scholarships through Ohio State. If we're adding all this up, I basically got around $44,000 in scholarships. I was only allowed to accept about $30,000 because of the fact that you're not legally allowed to accept an amount that's over your estimated cost of attendance for your university. How did you search for scholarships? The first one being your department website. If you're watching this video, I'm assuming that you are either a Japanese major or minor or planning to be one. Your department and your university will offer a lot of scholarships, especially for students who are intending to study abroad in Japan. Applying to scholarships that are really specific to your major is a really great way to access funds because of the fact that the application pool is a lot smaller compared to if you applied to a university-wide scholarship. Professors. Take this time to really utilize your professors and go to all their office hours. My sensei was actually on the board for one of the scholarships that I applied to. Obviously, he wasn't allowed to be there when they were critiquing my application. He did help improve my resume and wrote a couple rec letters for me. Upperclassmen. Look towards your senpais for any advice on how to apply for scholarships, especially the ones who have gone to study abroad programs before. If you don't know anyone that has studied abroad before, I'd recommend that you go to your education abroad office and ask to speak with a peer advisor. Getting organized. One of the hardest things, especially during this scholarship writing period, was keeping up with all the requirements in addition to the deadlines. So something that I used that really helped me was making an Excel sheet, as boring as that sounds. So here's my Excel sheet. I wrote the scholarship name, the deadline date, the amount of scholarship essays required, the amount of recommendation letters required in addition to any external things that they needed from me, whether that was proof of my mother's income and things of that sort. Asking for rec letters. Here are some tips when you are asking your professors for recommendation letters. One, print out your resume and any information about the scholarship that you're applying to. Ask for rec letters in advance. If you have a scholarship that's due on December 1st, you best believe you better ask a professor on November 1st. Don't ask your professors that you've never really talked to. I think that personally is so rude because how can you expect someone to write good things about you if they honestly have never even seen your face and you look indistinguishable from the hundreds of faces that they see every single day. Types of essays. Something that I noticed is a lot of the scholarship topics are pretty generic. I kind of have a list of like general topics that they might ask you to write about, so I'm gonna read it off now. Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Describe a challenge that you had to overcome. What are your most important activities outside of school? How will the funds help you in your future endeavors? I think it's really, really important to kind of look back at yourself and ask, why am I studying abroad? Will studying abroad help me in my future endeavors? And how will I benefit the community and ultimately bring back those funds that were given to me? For me at least, I wrote about how going to Japan would further my speaking skills and ultimately help me for my occupation that I'd really like to have, which would be an international accountant. So working with Japanese and US companies and kind of forming this little hashi, this little bridge. Use as much imagery as possible when writing. You're basically compelling a random ass stranger to give you a shit ton of money. So you best believe you need to make it your story and draw them a picture of why you deserve this money compared to anyone else. Anyone can go up to someone and say like, oh yeah, Japan's really cool. I like Japanese. I'm a big fucking weeb. Take this time, tell your story, provide as much imagery as possible on who you are as a person and what you wanna accomplish through your study abroad. Reviewing your work. A month before your application is due, take this time to have all of your essays revised. This is a time you'll want to get your friends, family and external help involved. Google Docs is a really good resource because the fact that you can actually see their edits and their comments on why some of your sentences sound kind of funky. Last, I'd recommend that you go to the writing centers at your university. Basically, this is a place where people will be able to critique your resume, any scholarship essays that you have, et cetera. This is their job. So definitely utilize this resource. After everything has been edited, revised and rewritten over and over and over, close your laptop, put it away. And the next day, reread it out loud again. By now, you'll probably have zero mistakes and have your paper exactly the way you want it. So do yourself a favor and turn it in on time or even better, turn it early. The website portal that you're using to submit your scholarship essays into might potentially crash, especially if it's like an hour before everything is due. So I'd recommend that you submit the essay as early as possible. Now that you have submitted your application, you are fucking done. And now we can sit back and relax and check our emails every single day for about 20 times a day, just so you can see if you got rejected for a scholarship and then ultimately have to get student loans and have student debt. I really, really wish you guys the best of luck in all of your scholarship endeavors. Going to Japan was probably the best experience that I could ever ask for. I hope this video was helpful to you guys. And if it wasn't, well, shit, I don't know anymore. I do plan on making another video specifically related to my study abroad and all my experiences in Japan. So stay tuned for that. Like, comment, subscribe. We hate it, but we gotta say it. This is Linda signing off. And until next time, bye guys.