Which university for Japanese undergrad?

As far as I know, the main universities in the UK that provide single honours Japanese undergrad degrees are... SOAS, Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, Sheffield and Oxbridge.
Currently my grades at AS level won't allow for me to go to Oxbridge, but I can potentially get into SOAS (AAB).

What i want to know is whether not going to SOAS (with an apparent drug problem and rubbish social life) would be severely damaging to my career prospects if i should go to one of the other universities.

If anybody would like to give their opinion as to which university aside from SOAS and Oxbridge would give the best degree and career opportunities please do!!!

Sorry my question was so long winded!

Thankyou :smile:

Reply 1

Diaz89

drug problem and rubbish social life at SOAS?

Reply 2

nikki

"severely damaging"? You do realise that those are all perfectly good universities, right? You make it sound like the only alternative to Oxbridge and SOAS is a third in a completely unrelated subject from a university at the bottom of the league tables.

Reply 3

username330427

A degree from SOAS in Japanese would be good - it's a specialist institute for that sort of thing. Plus, it's London, you can't really go wrong there (especially as it's a constituent of UoL).

Additionally, nothing wrong with the other places you listed, they're all perfectly respectable universities. Plus, I know Oxford Brookes offer straight Japanese, so you could have that as a back-up back-up. (Maybe?) A languages degree is a good way to get employed - having a good grasp of Japanese would be a desirable skill. Therefore, I doubt the institution will matter that much. :smile:

Reply 4

Lewis :D

You can do a Japanese joint honours in Cardiff with another language

Reply 5

Tefhel

The others you suggested are largely Russell Group, redbrick, top 20 unis... Hardly going to damage your career prospects are they.

This is coming from a (future) Japanese student by the way.

Reply 6

AntoineUK

First of all SOAS is great, definitely go there if you don't hit oxbridge for a Japanese course. What you can also do is hiting a top ten uni in a related mainstream subject like geography and then doing a masters in Japanese; it would give you better prospects if you don't hit SOAS/oxbridge and time to decide if you really want to study Japanese. I think it's a better way to do it. Remember you can always choose modules in Japanese if you still want to do that whilst enrolled on a geography course for example. I think it's a better plan since employers tend to look at the Uni first.