From Application to Enrollment

2018/02/02

Winter is the season for university entrance examinations. The process of prospective students applying, taking exams in classrooms, receiving acceptance notifications, and completing enrollment procedures has remained fundamentally unchanged for a long time. However, the detailed steps involved have changed significantly over the past 30 years. What has changed, and how?

To take an entrance exam, the first step is to obtain an application guide. For a long time, guides for general entrance examinations were sold at bookstores, and for those in rural areas or without a nearby bookstore, they were sent by mail. However, this changed significantly with the introduction of online applications. Initially, all universities offered a hybrid system where applications could be submitted either on paper or online. In recent years, however, they have begun to transition to an "all-online" system, discontinuing paper guides and consolidating to online applications. Gijuku introduced online applications for the 2017 academic year entrance exams and abolished paper guides. Being a late adopter, it employed the latest online methods: applicants upload their photos via the web, and they print their own examination admission slips from a printer instead of receiving them by mail from the university.

After the exams, applicants wait for the announcement of results. The classic image in newspapers and on television was of people reacting with joy and sorrow in front of a special bulletin board where lists of successful applicants' numbers were posted. This, however, has slowly changed over the past 30 years. The first change came with the 1986 academic year entrance exams, when the university began mailing lists of successful and waitlisted applicants' numbers via electronic mail. However, enrollment documents could only be obtained by going to the Mita campus. This changed with the 1991 academic year entrance exams. The list of successful applicants' numbers arrived the same day via electronic mail, and Gijuku began mailing acceptance letters and enrollment documents to students' homes for next-day delivery. This major reform drastically changed the announcement of results and enrollment procedures, dramatically improving convenience for applicants and their families.

Later, in the 2004 academic year, the announcement of results via the internet was introduced. The following year, an automated telephone response system was also added, making it possible to check results easily from anywhere. As a result, the posting of lists of successful applicants' numbers gradually became a supplementary method. Then, due to privacy concerns, this long-standing tradition finally came to an end in the 2009 academic year.

Regarding enrollment procedures, the 1991 reform allowed the first stage of the process—paying the admission fee—to be completed by bank transfer and mail. However, the second stage for those who decided to enroll at Gijuku still required a visit to the enrollment office on the Mita campus. In the 2009 academic year, this also became possible to complete by mail, and post-enrollment materials such as course registration guides began to be delivered to students' homes by courier. With the exception of those waiting for late-term results from national and public universities in late March, or those admitted from the waitlist from mid-March onward, it became possible to go from the exam day to the entrance ceremony without ever setting foot on campus.

In the current 2018 academic year entrance exams, most of the enrollment documents are now completed via a web form, and the telegrams used to notify students of their admission from the waitlist have also fulfilled their historical mission and been replaced by online notifications.

(Editorial Department)