日本語版

Translated from the Japanese original published May 7, 2021.

MIT's Great Dome

Introduction

Nice to meet you. I’m Kota Kondo. With support from the Funai Foundation for Information Technology scholarship, I will start graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in fall 2021 to study aerospace engineering. I decided to write this retrospective so that people applying to graduate schools abroad in the coming years can make use of the experiences and lessons I gained through my own applications.

Objective, well-organized information about applying can be found at XPLANE (a Japanese nonprofit that supports students applying to graduate school abroad) and in Kakehashi, the newsletter of the Japanese graduate student association in the US (米国大学院学生会), so please do take a look at them. Besides these sites, I have listed the other sites I used while applying at the end of this article, so please check those out too.

Background

I went to local public schools for elementary and junior high school. I was passionate about soccer from the age of six, and I chose my high school for soccer too. Bunan High School (武南高校) is a private school, but in a good way it had the feel of a public school. It had everything from sports classes with a full-on athletic culture to an advanced-track class with a college-prep atmosphere, and a wide range of students went there. I was in what was called the selective class, for people who wanted to put in a bit of effort on their studies but also wanted to work hard at their club activities. I recently gave a talk at Bunan High School, so if you are interested, please take a look at the article about the talk.

For university, I went to Kyushu University and joined the aerospace engineering course. My lab was the Hanada Lab, where I worked on satellite attitude control and on the Q-Li satellite.

The year before last, I spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Michigan and had a great time studying abroad. I also took part in Stanford’s Summer Session and was involved, just a little, in a satellite development project. That was a lot of fun too!

Why I Aimed for Graduate School Abroad

What started me on the path to graduate school abroad was a rocket I saw at the Kennedy Space Center in the US in the spring of my second year of undergrad. That spring I had come to the US to attend a seminar hosted by the U.S. Embassy. Although I was studying aerospace at university, I hadn’t decided whether to focus on aeronautics or on space, and when an engineer from Silicon Valley I met at the seminar told me, “Find something you can work on with passion, and make that your job,” I decided to set out on a trip across America to find myself. I traveled from California on the West Coast to Florida on the East Coast, and when I stopped by the Kennedy Space Center, I was lucky enough to see a rocket launch. It was the first rocket launch I had ever seen. A tremendous roar, and a light so brilliant I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The beautiful rocket powered upward, as if to say “Gravity doesn’t matter to me!!”, and in an instant it vanished into the far reaches of the sky. That was the first moment I thought I wanted to study space in America.

Results

First, I’d like to share my results. In the end I was admitted to several universities, but I was rejected by Caltech. In fact, when I emailed a Caltech professor before applying, I was told they had no funding this year and would not be taking students. I applied anyway, knowing it was a long shot, but I was rejected without even an interview. As this shows, admission to graduate schools abroad depends on professors’ funding and many other factors, so I think it is good to apply to many schools, spread evenly from reach schools to safety schools.

University Result Notes
MIT Waitlist -> admitted to Master’s MIT AeroAstro has a rather unusual system in which undergraduates cannot apply to the PhD program.
Stanford rejected for PhD, admitted to Master’s I applied to the PhD program but was admitted to the Master’s.
UC Berkeley admitted to PhD  
University of Michigan admitted to PhD  
Georgia Tech admitted to PhD  
CU Boulder admitted to PhD  
Caltech rejected  

Preparing the Application

Here I summarize information about the documents and tests I needed for my applications.

There are many opinions on how to prioritize the application materials, but roughly, this is how I would rank them.

Letters of recommendation, connections >> research record > whether you have a scholarship > Statement of Purpose > GPA >> TOEFL > GRE

There is no need at all to memorize the exact order, but I think it helps to prepare your applications with a rough picture like this in mind. However, although the TOEFL is not very important, its score is used as a cutoff, so I think you should prioritize studying for it at first so that you get the required score (around 100 for top schools) early.

(Below, I explain each part of the application in detail.)

Letters of Recommendation

Letters of recommendation are one of the most important parts of the application. A letter of recommendation is a document in which someone evaluates your abilities objectively, and both its content and its writer matter. Of course, it is an advantage if the writer is a well-known professor, but a substantive letter from a less famous professor is far better than a thin letter from a famous one. For this reason, I think it is better to ask professors who you feel understand you well.

For graduate schools in the US, you need at least three letters. In my case, I had one from a professor in my lab at Kyushu University and two from professors at the University of Michigan. When I applied to Stanford, I also had one written by a Stanford professor who had looked after me at the summer school.

Writing a letter of recommendation is a burden on the professor, so I think it is best to ask as early as possible so that they can write it in time for your applications.

Connections with Professors

Connections with professors are also very important. I think it is hard for professors to tell how capable a student really is from the application documents alone. In that situation, if you have actually done research together and have a connection with the professor, your chances of being admitted go up.

In my case, during my exchange at the University of Michigan I did research with three professors and was able to build connections with them. When I applied to Michigan, I was admitted on the happy condition that two of them would co-advise me. Exchange programs and the like may be difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic, but try talking to your advisor in Japan or reaching out to students you know, and do your best to build connections with professors abroad.

Research Record

Your research record goes in your resume and SoP. It also lets you write about the skills you have gained through your research so far, so it is a strong selling point to professors.

In my case, through my research at Kyushu University and the University of Michigan I had one international journal paper, three international conference papers and one domestic poster. That said, many people are admitted without many papers, so it seems you don’t need to worry too much. A research record is not something you can change right before applying, so if you don’t have papers, I think what matters is to plan your documents and interview preparation with that in mind. If you still have time before applying, try your best to produce some research results!

I plan to publish my resume, which mainly summarizes my research record, on the web when this year’s application season gets closer!

Scholarships

Graduate students in the US (especially PhD students) receive tuition and living expenses by working as RAs or TAs, so they basically pay nothing themselves. However, having an outside scholarship reduces the burden on the professor and the school, which makes admission more likely. For this reason, getting a scholarship is very important. In my case, I applied for seven scholarships, with the following results.

I was very happy when I was awarded the Funai scholarship, my first choice, but before that I had been rejected by several scholarships, which took quite a toll on me mentally. Looking back now, though, each scholarship has its own picture of the student it wants and selects students based on it, so I think that even if you are rejected, you shouldn’t get discouraged or worry about it too much.

It is not talked about much, but one benefit of applying for scholarships is that, before writing your SoP, you write an essay in Japanese for the scholarship application, which lets you get really clear about what you truly want to do in graduate school.

I plan to publish the application I submitted to the Funai Foundation as the application season approaches, so please use it as a reference.

Statement of Purpose (SoP)

The SoP is a relatively important factor. What you need to write in this essay is fairly fixed: why you want to study in graduate school, what your strengths are, what research experience you have, what you learned from it, and how it will help your research in graduate school, and so on. I think XPLANE’s SoP section and the PDF put together by Professor Kato, a member of the Funai Foundation’s selection committee, are helpful. XPLANE also runs a writing support project that matches current students studying abroad with applicants to help them write their SoPs. I got help from it last year too, and they helped me polish my SoP enormously (for free, of course). This year I plan to take part in the project on the supporting side.

Also, some universities specify what the SoP must cover or limit its length. Especially if you are applying to several schools, find out each university’s requirements early.

I plan to publish the SoP I submitted to MIT as the application season approaches, so look forward to it!

GPA

GPA is not a very important factor. It is said that you want a 3.8/4.0 if you are applying to top schools, but even if you fall short of that, I think you can more than make up for it with the rest of your application. Also, unlike the other materials, GPA is a factor you cannot improve right before applying, so don’t worry about it too much and put everything into your other materials. You’ll be fine!

If you are worried that your GPA is low, you might be able to convert it into a higher GPA using a service called WES (though I can’t say for sure, since I don’t know whether the universities you apply to accept WES scores). Just in case, here are links to a site that explains it in Japanese and the official WES website. I haven’t used it myself, so I don’t know how much it raises your GPA, but I’d be glad if this helps!

TOEFL

The TOEFL is not a high priority among the application materials. It is often said that it is only used as a cutoff in the selection process, so a higher score does not bring you closer to admission. So I think it is best to prepare for it without spending too much time and to spend your time on the rest of your application. For reference, my scores were

  • Reading 29
  • Listening 28
  • Speaking 30
  • Writing 27
  • Total 114

MIT AeroAstro’s official page said the minimum required score was 100, so at first I aimed for that. However, PrepScholar TOEFL said the average score of students admitted to MIT AeroAstro was 110, so in the end I aimed for that score.

Partly because I was aiming for an exchange program, I had been studying for the TOEFL since my first year of undergrad. At first my scores were very low (in the 30s, I think), but by my third year, before the exchange, I had scored 103. Then, after returning from the exchange, I scored 114.

Below I summarize how I studied for each section of the TOEFL. Please use it as a reference.

Reading

When I first started preparing for the TOEFL, I read English slowly and often couldn’t finish the Reading section in time. My vocabulary was also lacking, and with so many words I didn’t know, I had no choice but to guess. Learning from this, I focused first on building my vocabulary. I wasn’t sure which vocabulary book was best, but after looking at how various people studied for the TOEFL, I decided to choose the one that seemed to be used by the most people. I don’t think there is one right way to study for the TOEFL, but I do think there is a standard, tried-and-true approach. The standard approach takes time, but it reliably builds your skills. So I took the standard approach not only with vocabulary books but also with study guides: as I’ll explain properly later, I used the so-called (standard) official guide published by ETS. As for vocabulary books, I went through the following three many times (I never counted exactly, but I think I went through them a good 100 times). I didn’t use any other vocabulary books at all, so I think it is fair to say that if you master the words in these books, you can get a good TOEFL score.

I used an IELTS vocabulary book so that I could easily pivot if I couldn’t get a high score on the TOEFL. Working through three books at the same time is tough, so if you are short on time, I think it is enough to start with the first two.

Once you have built up enough vocabulary, you need what is called reading ability, but I didn’t do any special study for this. I think what improved my reading was reading lots of English books (extensive reading) and carefully reading, word by word, the aerospace textbooks used in my classes (intensive reading).

Listening

For Listening, I studied by spending all my free time listening to English audio. Specifically,

  • Listening to World News Tonight with David Muir as a podcast
  • Watching TEDx videos that caught my interest
  • Watching movies and TV shows on Netflix that caught my interest

and so on. Above all, I tried to increase how much time I spent listening and how much I listened to. I also think it is important to listen again, dozens of times, to things you have understood. I think listening over and over to what you have understood is what makes listening skills stick (I have played the movie Apollo 13 as background while working so many times that I’ve memorized every line).

Speaking

For Speaking, I decided to memorize templates and adapt them to each question when answering. You can find lots of practice questions on YouTube, so I practiced with them over and over again. For the templates, I used the ones posted by linguamarina on YouTube as they were. Please take a look at this video.

However, memorizing templates alone won’t get you a good score, so in my case I needed to make sure I had chances to speak English. Kyushu University had a place where you could talk with international students, and I went there often. I have never used English conversation lessons or similar services, but using such a service to create chances to speak English might be a good idea.

Writing

Writing was a struggle for me too; I couldn’t get a good score. Hiroshi Watanabe has carefully summarized how to study for this section, so please take a look at this post on note (a Japanese blogging platform).

To summarize the post:

  • The TOEFL is a test for non-native speakers, so there is no need at all to write sophisticated content.
  • Above all, write a lot, going 200 or even 300 words over the standard word count.
  • Absolutely avoid spelling and grammar mistakes.

That’s it. Just doing this made my score jump right up, which really surprised me. However, I think writing a lot and writing with fewer small mistakes take a fair amount of practice, so it’s good if you can start early.

Right Before the Test

The TOEFL is a test of English ability, but I think it is no exaggeration to say that it is also a test of how used you are to the TOEFL itself. So right before the test, practice by solving as many TOEFL-format practice questions as you can. For practice questions, I used ETS’s official guide. Also, since you need to get used to this test, I think it is better to take it several times if you can. The TOEFL is hard, but I think it is a test where your score goes up if you work hard. Good luck!!!

GRE

A recent trend is that more and more schools don’t require the GRE, so first of all, check whether the programs and schools you want to apply to require it.

Like the TOEFL, the GRE is not a high priority among the application materials, so I think it is important not to spend too much time preparing for it. For reference, my scores were

  • Verbal 155
  • Quantitative 170
  • Writing 4.0

It is often said that a combined V and Q of 320 is a high score, so I aimed for that. It is also said that if you apply to science and engineering programs, you should get a perfect Q score, so I think people applying to STEM programs should keep that in mind too.

To prepare, I used Kaplan’s GRE prep. Taking the online course is more expensive, so I chose the option where you work through the materials on your own. My impression is that many people use either Kaplan or Magoosh. Both have courses that cover all of Verbal, Quantitative and Writing, so I recommend using one of those.

Verbal

Verbal has many very difficult questions, so preparing for it was hard. Since it uses a huge number of difficult words, I focused on building my vocabulary. The vocabulary set I used was 500 Essential Words: GRE Vocabulary Flash Cards. These flashcards cover 500 essential words, and 500 more advanced words are covered in 500 Advanced Words: GRE Vocabulary Flashcards. I was eager at first and bought both, but finishing Essential took everything I had, so I never got to 500 Advanced. Even so, I got 155, so if your target score is around there, I think preparing with Essential alone is enough.

Quantitative

As is often said, the questions are at the level of junior high school math, so they are not very difficult. However, (obviously) the questions are in English, so you need to learn in English the junior high math terms you learned in Japanese (isosceles triangle, for example). Still, once you learn the words, the questions are relatively easy, so I didn’t struggle.

Writing

Unlike TOEFL Writing, GRE Writing asks for substantive content, so it was hard. I prepared only with Kaplan and got a decent score. It is hard to get a high score without basic writing ability, so if you aren’t getting around 25 on TOEFL Writing, it may be better to focus on the TOEFL first and move on to GRE Writing once you are getting a reasonable score there.

Interviews

I had interviews with professors at every university except Stanford and Caltech. Some lasted an hour and a half with all kinds of questions, while others were over in about 10 minutes, and I didn’t feel there was any set format. Still, here is a summary of what I was commonly asked:

  • My research so far
  • The research I want to do in graduate school
  • Why I want to come to their lab
  • Research skills (programming, etc.)
  • “Do you have any questions?”

That’s roughly it. I was asked “Do you have any questions?” almost every time, so I think it is good to prepare for it in advance.

Choosing Where to Go

Choosing where to go after being admitted meant taking many things into account. In the end, I put whether I could do the research I wanted first, but I made my decision by weighing all of the following together.

  • Fit with the professor
  • The atmosphere among the lab members
  • The lab’s reputation
  • The quality of the lab’s facilities
  • Whether I could do the research I wanted
  • The school’s location (rural or urban)

My advisor at MIT will be Prof. How, a very well-known professor who nevertheless always holds a 30-minute meeting with every student each week, and this was a big plus (it is rare for a busy professor to make this much time for students). I also met with students in the lab I am joining, the Aerospace Controls Lab, and learned that the research environment is excellent. MIT is in Boston, a lively area with many other universities nearby. Kyushu University and the University of Michigan are both in the suburbs (the suburbs have their own appeal, and I liked both universities), so this time I also wanted to try student life in a city. Taking all of these things into account, I concluded that MIT was the right choice.

Wrapping Up

Aiming for graduate school abroad made my university life very fun and meaningful. It was because I aimed for graduate school abroad that I could work hard at English, go on an exchange, and start research in my third year. Even if I had not been admitted to a graduate school abroad, I think what I gained by aiming abroad would have been something wonderful, an asset that would support me for the rest of my life. I was lucky enough to be admitted, and I can keep studying toward my dream, but this would truly not have been possible without the support of the people around me.

I’d like to take this opportunity to truly thank my family, who patiently supported me despite my selfishness. Thank you. And to the many people ahead of me who helped me with scholarships and applications, thank you so much. Finally, I want to say thank you to all my fellow applicants, whom I met through XPLANE and elsewhere and who helped me so much. I’m counting on you from here on, too.

Of course, I am proud of the effort I put in to get admitted, but there is no doubt that I was very lucky, and I don’t think I could have been admitted without that luck. From now on, I want to pay back what I received: to pass on the kindness I was given to the next generation, to hand down the support I got from those ahead of me to those coming after me, and to share with the people around me the experiences I was lucky enough to have.