The Student Room Group
School of Oriental and African Studies
London

Do I need to have done an a level in a language to do Japanese Studies at SOAS?????

Okay, so I’m having a bit of a crisis. I really want to study Japanese Studies along with Politics at SOAS. My predicted grades are currently AAA. I’ve looked on the website and for Japanese studies it says a language is desirable but not essential whereas for Japanese it says it is required (which gives me hope). I just want to know what are my chances of actually getting onto that course, because SOAS is the only uni I want to apply to and only applying there is risky but not many other places provide this course which means if I were to make my personal statement accommodate another course at a different uni my whole personal statement would sound vague.
As you've stated, it is "desirable but not essential". The Japanese Studies version of the course has less language work than the full language degree (hence being called "Studies") so it isn't as essential to know you have that language background. It's probably also less critical for the joint honours version since you're only required to take a language module for that half of the degree in first year (and can take non-language modules in Japanese Studies exclusively from second year onwards, in the worst case scenario where you fail the language module in first year).
School of Oriental and African Studies
London
Original post by username4979440
Okay, so I’m having a bit of a crisis. I really want to study Japanese Studies along with Politics at SOAS. My predicted grades are currently AAA. I’ve looked on the website and for Japanese studies it says a language is desirable but not essential whereas for Japanese it says it is required (which gives me hope). I just want to know what are my chances of actually getting onto that course, because SOAS is the only uni I want to apply to and only applying there is risky but not many other places provide this course which means if I were to make my personal statement accommodate another course at a different uni my whole personal statement would sound vague.

I agree with everything artful_lounger mentioned, but also the Studies course is typically a lot less popular than the straight Japanese course so your chances of getting in (especially with your grades) are pretty high. When they say it's preferred and not required they really do mean it, that's what they said for my degree course and I managed to get in without an A Level, all I had was a fast-track GCSE language

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