Cambridge Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) Students and Applicants

manolya

Anyone starting, or wishing to start, Japanese Studies in Cambridge this October? :wink:

Scroll to see replies

Reply 1

Supergrunch

No, but I might go to the intermediate Japanese lectures next year. We shall see how much time I have.

Reply 2

groovy_moose

the likelyhood of meeting someone else on here that is actually starting japanese in the deptartment is pretty slim - on it's own it's one of the very smallest subjects in the uni (although this is possibly not true of oriental studies (or whatever they're calling it now) as a whole)

Reply 3

coldfish

Having said that, we have about half of the philosophy faculty on here.

Reply 4

manolya

That's why I was asking :smile:

- curiosity. The interviewer said me that they choose only 8-10 people to study Japanese each year :tongue:

Reply 5

manolya

you also have Edinburgh as your Insurance

They pooled me from Corpus to Homerton :tongue:

Reply 6

manolya

I'm satisfied with my offer :smile:

I made an Open Application and Homerton is indeed really nice (but sooooo far away... :frown:

)
IB is not really very hard itself. The biggest problem is the schedule of the exams - e.g. two exams from two different subject a day :eek:

Reply 7

manolya

At least, it will finally mobilise me to practise sport :biggrin:

- as riding a bike every day is SOME sort of sport

Reply 8

dominiclmorris

I would be the Japanologist starting at Corpus this year, pooled from Emmanuel, but very happy about my place :biggrin:

How do people seem to know my story/existance (._.?)
But yeah! nice to speak to some other Orientalists, to the OP: have you done any Japanese before?
Is anyone in Japan this summer?

EDIT: replace anything which sounds confident with an "In the occasion that I get 3 As and actually make it in", I don't work hard enough and I feel somewhat cheeky pretending I'm of Cambridge-caliber >_>

Reply 9

manolya

I don't know Japanese :smile:

nothing besides words existing in the popular culture, like kimono or sushi :biggrin:

and you?

Reply 10

bisou797

I'm coming to do Chinese, not many people do oriental studies on here do they? What colleges are you all at?

Reply 11

Zoedotdot

dominiclmorris

I would be the Japanologist starting at Corpus this year, pooled from Emmanuel, but very happy about my place :biggrin:

How do people seem to know my story/existance (._.?)
But yeah! nice to speak to some other Orientalists, to the OP: have you done any Japanese before?
Is anyone in Japan this summer?

Were you the Japanologist at interviews at Emma on the 4th December? I can't imagine there being very many more applicants!

Reply 12

1361

Incidenally, I've always wondered what an oriental studies interview is like. Is it theoretical (i.e. analysing grammar and sentence structures in english to gauge an idea of how good you are at languages in general) or is it much more focussed on the culture of the region etc.?

Reply 13

Zanshin

I´ve also got an offer for Oriental Studies, but for Chinese :smile:

I´ll be coming to Queens´ in October hopefully..

1361

Well, there was nothing about analysing grammar or sentences in my interviews - I can´t really imagine that would be much help. They look at what languages you´re currently doing to see if you´re good at learning languages. My interviews were mostly about what books I´d read about China and about the culture, and also about my own opinion of historical or political developments.
I was also asked to look at some Chinese characters and say which parts from one character were similar to parts of different ones. There was a moment of panic at first when I thought they were going to ask me to read it or something lol :rolleyes:

Reply 14

manolya

I had my interview at the 6th of December.
My interviews were not really about Japan :smile:

Only at the beginning they asked about my interests in Japan and Japanese literature that I mentioned.
But the most of the interview was about psychoanalysis, literature in general, science, power etc :smile:

and they also gave my some English language exercises to see if I achieved the proficiency in English needed to start the course. I also had to look at Japanese characters for few seconds and redraw them :smile:

But fortunately I have some manual skills and good memory for pictures so it was not as bad.
I think that the main aim of the interview is not to test the knowledge about e.g. Japan but to see how the applicant is "thinking". So they question about some topics familiar to appliants, but not neccessarily connected :smile:

To be sincere, I do not have very big knowledge about Japan :biggrin:

I just love Japanese novels.

Reply 15

dominiclmorris

I was indeed the Japanologist at Emma on the 4th, did we meet?
Sorry, I bad with this sort of thing >_> Oh but I do remember talk to lots of people in the Emma common room place, what did we talk about?
My interview was pretty Japan based, but I name dropped half a dozen books on japan in my PS so they prolly wanted to test that I did actually read some...

It's a good thing I had! They saw I was doing the Cold War in history and asked me to explain Japan's position in the Cold War (the course has /nothing/ to do with Japan) so I talked about her relationship with American in the western Bloc, they then pushed me furhter asking how Japan was able to co-operate with the country she has been fighting so recently, I mentioned a theory of how it was their willingness to accept defeat that allowed them to put their past behind, and then they took that answer and asked why it was that they were willing to accept defeat. They really kept going >_<

Then I had to do some grammar, character spotting work, which I don't think I did that well, and I had to read a passage of Clash of the Civilisations and summerise it's arguement.

I actually really enjoyed it, but I machocistic like that.

Reply 16

Zoedotdot

dominiclmorris

We did indeed, but you were probably more memorable than me as I was just one of the hordes of MMLers. Erm, we talked about London a bit. And I think about music as well. And probably about how my aunty lived in Japan, I can't think how I would have failed to bring that up :p:

I was one of the only people who wasn't applying for French and Italian on that day!

Reply 17

Supergrunch

dominiclmorris

But yeah! nice to speak to some other Orientalists, to the OP: have you done any Japanese before?
Is anyone in Japan this summer?

Yes and yes, but I'm not an orientalist. (or the OP, actually... :p:

) I do so love Japanese grammar though.

Reply 18

Catsmeat

I must add that the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology has recently 'acquired' certain segments of Oriental Studies, including Assyriology and Egyptology. This doesn't change the function of the thread, but at least it gives A&A students somewhere, putatively, to congregate without their own.

Reply 19

Raylin

1361

Mine was a bit of both (although I'm doing for Oriental Studies Combined, so you probably expect a little more language) My French interview started with reading a passage, and discussing it in French, then it was all about things from my personal statement (in English, thankfully!) I think we ended up talking about fiction in general, and the differences between books and films.

My Oriental Studies interview was a mixture of talking about grammar and talking a little about culture and history. I got asked to translate a few things into French, and talk about how it's different from English, and then we talked about Turkey, which I think I mentioned, and they picked up on.

As for (sort of) Admissions interview, it was another sort of weird mix. We talked about tourism, I got asked to describe a photo (that really threw me...), and then we talked about L'etranger, because I'd mentioned it in my PS.