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I wanted to write this paper since a long time ago but never realized it due to my hectic schedules in the office and other short of things. This paper is dedicated for everyone who appeals to apply for monbusho research student program. If you do not have any idea what monbusho is, please refer to Japan embassy site in your country. Briefly monbusho is an abbreviation from monbukagakusho, stands for Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, or. MEXT. Each year MEXT have been providing scholarship for numerous students all over the world, including degree and non degree programs. You can dig deeper information by referring to the site.
What I wanted to share in this paper is my journey to obtain this prestigious scholarship. Hopefully readers can acquire beneficial information from my writing thus ease the candidate to get through the lengthy-application process. Nevertheless, if you find any supply from former monbusho scholars or from your professor, you may want to follow their instructions and put what you get here in least priority. What is written here comes from my perspective, so please do not use it as a fixed benchmark during your application process. Try to solicit information as much as possible and conclude what kind of act you need to take.
Before further reading, I would like to convey once again that this paper is merely my subjective perspective and may not apply in every situation since different country, major and field of research allow different way of procedures. I am an Indonesian, 23 years old at the time of application, majoring economic management, type of scholarship I got is the research student program until the completion of master degree (approximately 2.5 years program) 2010. Since my native language in Bahasa Indonesia, until present I am still practicing to write in English as perfect as I can. Therefore please excuse any mistake in grammar or unsuitable vocabulary usage you may find.











The idea of studying in Japan appealed to me because of its rich history and cultures. I love Japanese animation, samurai, ninja, Jpop, calligraphy and many other things I won’t mention here.
Since my staying in Japan during 2008 – 2009, I have felt in love with Japan.  Even though I am sure that no country is perfect, I love Japan in some ways, e.g. the people manner, the way they keep their inherited cultures, hardworking and their persistence in achieving something. Thus when I was going home to Indonesia at March 2009, I have made up my mind to return again to Japan by scholarship some day.
According to what I am seeing in everyday situation, people tend to believe that a scholar is a superman. He must be genius in some way, a highly achiever person who is diligent and focusing his life on studying. Is it true? I do not really know the answer but for you to know, I am not that kind of person. I do like study but I just do it occasionally, primarily once in a week. When the exam date is approaching, I readjust my study method; start studying in earnest at least two weeks before the day comes. I have no intention to slump your effort but that is the way I am.
Then, getting the monbusho scholarship, is it hard? The answer lays on your thoughts. To keep at the top of your game you have to keep a clear head. You can't afford to fill up on news and negativity. The world's overflowing with it and the only way to be a winner is to be in control of your thoughts. Your thoughts become words, your words become actions and your actions become your destiny. Someone else came up with that, but I've always remembered it because it's true. Our actions show who we truly are and how shallow or deep our character is.
It's important to keep a positive mental attitude no matter what your life is like because nothing is more important than your thoughts. They determine how you'll experience the next minute, hour, day, week, year, decade and century. Rid your life of people and circumstances that don't inspire and enliven you. Life's simply too short to put up distracting drama and complainers who never change anything.
Now, have you clear up your mind? If your answer is yes, then you are getting one step closer to the scholarship.
Students who come from countries that do not use Kanji may be worried about studying in Japan, but I think you should go ahead and come to Japan without worrying about your language ability. Possessing Japanese language is not a must. Once again, it is not a must. If you do not believe me, see the requirement of applying, stated there that possessing Japanese language is only an option, even though possessing it allows greater advantage for candidates. There are 4 of my monbusho mates who do not understand Japanese at all but still be able to pass.  




Believe it or not, your dreams contribute a severe effect towards your effort. How big is your dream? There’s nothing wrong having a dream. There’s nothing wrong to struggle achieving your dream. The same goes with me, my scholarship award commenced with dream. If you haven’t have a dream, then go sleep and have some dreams.


 
 


Wake up from your sleep. Don’t get too long on dreaming. Make up your mind that you must make it happen. You can start building some information. For your info, you can a bunch of Japan scholarship opportunity in this link,

http://maigo1503.multiply.com/journal/item/6/List_of_Japan_scholarship_available_for_Indonesian_applicant

Go on to every sites, read every single detail.


 












First thing first to start is designing the best research proposal ever. Don’t have any ideas how to construct good research proposal? Then you are same with me. I have interest on finance topic but structuring a research was still very much up in the air.
Then, how to solve it? How to start? What I did is refresh my knowledge and area of interest by visiting my former university’s library. I scanned through plenty of graduation thesis searching what kind of topic would fit me best. After back and forth for about one week, I finally ended up at banking topic. I personally think that researching a field area I know best is a good choice, even though at that time I didn’t really mastering finance banking, at least I have interest on learning it.
Monbusho research student program provides 6 until 12 months for students to complete their research before entering the master program. Therefore, I suggest you not to take a complicated and extensive research. Keep it brief and interesting, but beware of designing it too simple which might fails your struggle of passing the scholarship.
 
You might want to know what kind of aspects make applicant fail to build a good research proposal.
Common Mistakes in proposal writing:
•    Failure to provide the proper context to frame the research question.
•    Failure to delimit the boundary conditions for your research.
•    Failure to cite landmark studies.
•    Failure to accurately present the theoretical and empirical contributions by other researchers.
•    Failure to stay focused on the research question.
•    Failure to develop a coherent and persuasive argument for the proposed research.
•    Too much detail on minor issues, but not enough detail on major issues.
•    Too much rambling — going "all over the map" without a clear sense of direction. (The best proposals move forward with ease and grace like a seamless river.)
•    Too many citation lapses and incorrect references. Too long or too short.
•    Failing to follow the APA style.
•    Slopping writing.


 












After you have enough confidence with your research proposal, you can start trying to reach a professor who will to recommend you. You can do this step as early as you can even though the scholarship screening has not been commenced. The application is commonly open public starting from April each year. All necessary documents for application and basic requirements are completely stated in the embassy homepage. Of all the downloadable documents, you may find the “recommendation letter” file. This file is to be filled by your supervisor in your workplace (if you are an employee), or by your former lecturer or professor in your home university who are willing to recommend you.
Get the thing done as fast as you can since it usually takes long time. The best thing you can do is asking your relatives or friends who know a Japanese professor to be introduced to you. But if you do not have such friends then you are same with me. I started contacting professor since March (2 months before the opening of application). What I could do at that time is only depending on my laptop and mobile modem to keep me online and sought for information. 

 
I recommend you to explore all the universities sites you wish to enroll as starting point. Almost all universities contain their professors’ mailing list. Find the professor who matches your major and interest. Before contacting them you might want to do some research about the professor’s study background. Scan through all papers they have written, since having knowledge about their research papers could be a good benefit for you to start a conversation when first mailing them.
I recommend you to write a simple introduction statement like,
“Hello professor XXX. My name is maigo from Indonesia. I have seen your researches and reach to conclusion that our major and interests are quite match. I really love your research titled XXX, which in my thought, is a really beneficial research. I really enjoy reading it, particularly your final conclusion part that states YYYXXXZZZZ.
I would like to convey that right now I am in the middle of MEXT scholarship process to obtain a master program scholarship program next year. I really am interest with your research, and also with your university XXX where you belong to. If you mind, would you like to be my academic advisor should I manage to pass this scholarship?
For your consideration, I have attached supporting documents related to my background; include CV, academic transcript, research proposal, certificate of graduation, and other necessary documents. Please have a look when you have time.
If you mind to supervise me, I kindly request your assistance to fill recommendation letter for me which I would send the scanned file to you after I get respond from you.
Sincerely,
Maigo1503”
By the way if you are still not sure to which university you want to enroll, you can access this link to get some information http://read.jst.go.jp/index_e.html













The majority of the application is pretty straightforward; names, addresses, dates, that sort of thing. You can write it in English or Japanese; I went with English. Just go over the application guidelines and follow them to the letter.
Make your application look as pretty as possible. If you can, import the Monbusho PDF application into Adobe Illustrator and fill in the information there. If that’s not possible, use a typewriter or write as neatly as possible. Every aspect of your application should exude professionalism.
The application also requires you to submit the abstract of your academic thesis, to give applicant reviewers a sense of your work.
After filling all the documents, make sure to do recheck. Be sure to send it at least two weeks before the deadline to give you span of time to correct should the embassy find any mistake or incompleteness on your documents.
 







If you managed to pass the document screening, you will be called to do the next phase of tests. To practice, you can access http://www.studyjapan.go.jp/en/toj/toj0308e.html#1 that contains past problem of examinations.
Regarding the interview, you have to dig more on your knowledge about Japan. Who is the prime ministry of Japan? What kind of cooperation have Japan built with your country? Why makes you choose Japan as your destination?
Those are some of the examples of questions asked during the interview. Another type of question is around your research proposal. Some examples of questions proposed are as follow;
Why do choose that topic? Why you must go to Japan to complete that research? Why Japan? Why do you choose that statistic method? What are you going to do after graduating there?
 







You will get notification from embassy if you pass the interview process. Passing that phase means you are already recommended by embassy to receive the scholarship and they will give you graduation certificate of MEXT scholarship. You can relieve a bit at this point. The next step you have to do is obtaining Letter of Acceptance from your desired university. Contacting the professor who gave you recommendation letter would be the best step. Notify her or him that you have passed the selection process and already got recommended by embassy, then ask her or him to give you guide regarding the letter of acceptance. Most of professors will do it in your place but if not, ask him or her to give detail explanation on how to get it.
My recommendation is, don’t focus only to one university. Due to excess of applicants and lack of vacancy in your desired university, you might be rejected. I applied for around 10 universities at that time, which are Kyoto Univ, Osaka Univ, Tohoku Univ, Kobe, Nagoya, Kyushu, Hokkaido, Ritsumeikan, Waseda, and other universities which I don’t remember.
After ultimately struggling finally I got two LOA from Kyoto and Tohoku.
 
 



The last step is only waiting. This step will come over after you submit the LOA to embassy. However the embassy will only receive 3 LOA only, so I recommend you to prioritize your destinations. At this point, you will through a long wait period. The final announcement from Japan will come likely around January, and the final announcement of which university you will go will come around February. At this period, you might want to maintain your relationship with your professor and stay to keep update of what is going on in regard with your documents, dormitory application and other short of things. Thus, check back your email often. At the end of March, most likely 31 March, your embassy will contact you again for orientation, and finally in the next day (April 1st) you go to Japan! Horraaaay!
 







The process of gaining scholarship takes almost one year (April to April), but it worth the entire scramble. It is not easy and demands your focus and determination. But trust me that God will always help everyone who struggle so hard in achieving dream.
“When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it"

“求めよ！さらば与えられん”(motomeyo! Saraba ataeraren)
“Make a wish! Then it will be granted”

Good luck!











http://www.id.emb-japan.go.jp/sch.html
Wibirama, Sunu. “Chicken soup for scholarship applicants”.2007








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