mteacher80

yeah yeah google is my friend, but fuck that. you all (well some of you) have already been through this first stage.--or more
Next year I will be heading back to the US with my wife and daughter. I will never go back to school unless I am paid to do so. But my wife on the other hand wants to go back and get her masters.
We have just started discussing this and she asked me to see what kind of info i can find for her.

so...

1. good site for explaining this stuff to me
2. are there different requirements for international students vs US citizens?
3. you can take the gmat or whatever you are supposed to take, in osaka right?
4. ↑how much
5. anything else you lovely souls would like to tell me??

She has her undergrad degrees from the University of Kansas in Political Science and International relations. and would like to study either international politics or more IR stuff as well as Spanish in grad school......Probably like to go somewhere int he Midwest, any recommendations for places....or how i should start to look?

Thanks guys/gals

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southpaw

I'm here for you Mark!

Graduate Schools & Graduate Degrees Guide. Master Degree, MBA, PhD Degree Search - GradSchools.com is good for searching for programs and schools. It should link you to any schools which will have their specific info for requirements. Unfortunately, each school does have its own requirements and standards, but she should be fine since she'll have transcripts and even possibly letter of rec from a US school. So the requirements wouldn't be inherently different because she's foreign but because she would have credentials from foreign schools with different systems. She should be fine. Yea, I've heard GMATs and GRE's can be taken in Japan, but I can't say any more than that.

Good luck to you both! At least for my grad school taking courses in two different disciplines wasn't really a possibility. Maybe she could at a different school, but I wouldn't bet on it. She'd probably just be paying for elective undergrad courses.

mteacher80

cool sounds good. I will look at that site at lunch today.

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UPGRAYEDD

You won't ever need the GMAT for studying international relations or Spanish. You'll need the GRE.

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mteacher80

cool. yeah since i have never looked into it before i have no idea what is needed.

I did take a look at the site posted above though and it should be a lot of help at least in these beginning stages. now she also has to decide if she wants to TA or not...she would love to TA in the japanese department but study international affairs/relations/... is that possible??

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southpaw

Boy. At least at my school interdepartmental things were rare. At my school people could only TA for the department they were taking classes with (Psych grad students TAing for undergrad psych courses and so forth). But for languages, there were a TA for french and spanish, and I'm assuming they didn't take french or spanish courses. When she decides on schools or makes initial inquiries, she should email the graduate department as a whole and ask about TAing opportunities.

Yeah, if she's just emails whomever directs the TA programs then she should be able to find out what she can do and if it isn't tied to what she studies.

mteacher80

I know that my japanese techer in college was a linguistics grad student -- but since both deal with languages maybe that is why she could do it...?

I rather just win the lottery and not worry about school or work again!

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kalliea

+1 GMAT is next to useless unless you are going one of the few specific schools that only accept that.

I've never met a grad student that didn't TA. It doesn't pay great, but it is one o


Good news....most schools don't have out of state tuition for grad schools....everyone pays the same (high) price. Also, you will usually pay by the credit. There is no such thing as a full time grad student. Full time is considered 6 credits or more (depending on if your school is on semesters or quarters....) So...it isn't like 3-9 credits is one price. Every credit will be several hundred dollars. My grad school every credit was something like $580 or something...and that was a fairly cheap school.

So, things to prepare -

Transcripts: If your wife is Japanese, she will need English transcripts...
Letters of Rec: Most schools require 2-3 letters of recommendation
Writing Sample: I don't know what major your wife is (to lazy to read) but most humanities graduate programs require a 6-10 page writing sample. If she is doing a language graduate, she might need a translation sample...
GRE - Again, if she is Japanese, she needs to STUDY. It's been like 4 or 5 years, but I don't think there is any math on the GRE, only language. The hardest part for me was the words/meanings part. Get a GRE prepbook to get a better feeling for it.
SoP - You should know what this is...
Resume - again, easy

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karatemollie

The GRE has 3 sections: verbal, quantitative, and analytical writing and it is important to study for all three sections. You can buy prep books at any large bookstore or on Amazon (the Princeton Review one is nice). I'd recommend at least 6 weeks of study and that she memorizes the vocabulary list- it helps a lot.

Your wife may also need to take TOEFL.

kalliea

+1 to memorizing the vocab list. Lots and lots of help.

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southpaw

My school had full time/part time grad students, used to determine financial aid stuff. It depends on the school.

Mr. Plainview

at the two universities I attended, you could TA in another department as long as you could prove proficiency there. Obviously your wife would be proficient at japanese. Also, at my schools you could combine classes from different departments into your masters as long as you could show that they all had something to do with your overall goals in the program. like, you could take asian studies classes and Japanese classes and they would count toward an anthropology degree as long as your focus in anthropology was asia. that sort of thing. anyway, good luck!

puma

1) PM sent
2) If her bachelor's is from a US school, not really. She won't have to deal with TOEFL or anything, but she will have to get transcripts, with official translations into English
3) Yep.
4) Don't know, can't remember. I think the GRE in America was $140 or so. It's in the ballpark of that, likely a little less.

puma

Being a T/A often results in cheaper expenses, more so than it results in a paycheck.

Incorrect. All four of my schools have in-state and out-of-state tuition.

Incorrect. Same comment above, replacing tuition with full and part-time status. Whether or not your school will allow you to be a part-time student, however, is another matter.

ESID. One of my schools wants four writing samples of varying topics, another school doesn't want any, and the other schools are somewhere in between. The length and topic requirements, if any, vary for each program at each school.

Incorrect. Math, 800 points. Verbal, 800 points. Writing, 6 points in half point increments.

Don't be so sure. My schools want expanded resumes (3-4 pages), and one wants a quantitative/language resume "as detailed as possible." Unfortunately for me and my background, that worked out to 10 pages and that was cutting a decent bit of lower level stuff out.

mteacher80

dont fight guys.....thanks for all the info, we are looking more closely into a few schools.

My wife has her undergrad degree in Political Science and International relations (co-major) from a US school.
She is compleatly fluent in English (she took a years worth of ESL credits in one semester when she was in school so she could get on her major asap)
she scored a 980 on her Toeic three years ago, and without any studying scored a 960 this year (has to be re taken ever 3 years)
she will pass any math test --she is japanese-- but is willing to memorize and study all the verbal stuff.
but she is not confident on her writing. so thats one area we really need to work on. I always proof read her essays in college, but not sure if i should do that before she sends something in for this or not.

we found that at at least one place we have been looking at, if she is a grad student and TAs, since she is married and has a kid, we could get on campus apartment for almost free (just pay the bills) and free child care (just let the child development school do expariments on her...haha) and fairly cheap school.....now to see if they want to hire me in the student affairs department or to work with exchange student programs......

Thanks guys.

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kalliea

I guess it depends on what kind of schools you apply to, but all the schools I applied to you paid by the credit. This covered schools from Gonzaga to Stanford.

Again, depends on the school. I will admit I worded it wrong...fulltime grad students are 6 credits and above, but my school had a max of 12 credits.
And each program. A philosophy program is more likely to require a writing sample than a CS program.

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UPGRAYEDD

Private schools don't have in state and out of state distinctions.

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You see, gentlemen, a pimp's love is very different from a square's...
(郷に入っては郷に従え.)