MEXT Scholarship Journey [part.2]

The first 3 months of my employment days were hellish. Being introduced to the undocumented company's framework. (C'mon, dude!) But in the end, the director called me and he told me to do research about image filtering and classification. Using this opportunity to deepen my knowledge about deep learning which I never had a chance to, I applied simple ConvNet to do image classification for SmartCity photo reports. In October 2016 my project is ready to be implemented and I want to touch another plaything, RNN. But I remembered my mission. The scholarship. I decided to focus on MEXT.

Document Preparation and Failed Attempts

I went to the Japanese Embassy several times months before the next online registration. Thanks to their information. I asked them not about how to win, but rather why so many failed in the document screening step. I will write about this later. This thing might be the difference for those asking the consulate generals and straight to the embassy itself. The information they gave is superb. Because they are the center of primary screening process who handles your documents from the entire country.

My aunt still told me to come to German, but coming there is not free and I don't want to be indebted to anyone. So I refused the offer kindly but keep it in my head as the last resort if I don't pass this MEXT scholarship. I started to dig out recent papers and recent research about deep learning in Japan. No good result. I was too focused on prosthetic and deep learning but I can't go there because it requires nerve surgery and the sample will be hard to find.

Brain-Computer Interface is also not easy to develop. I found one in German, but the course is not in English, so yeah, bye... Then my research partner came and told me that she would go for speech-text transcription or some sort... There I thought once again if I could get a scholarship with my own topic.

In my first attempt, I contacted a professor in KyoDai but he didn't reply. I contacted a professor in KyuTech in January 2017 and he replied. In his email, he mentioned the total number of applicants of the program while offering a PGP scholarship. Little that I knew that it was prioritized for collaborating universities. I applied it and failed. I had no idea why that time. I have nowhere to go if  I stayed with my research topic, so I changed mine to speech-related one. The next one I tried to contact another professor in KyoDai, he replied but he mentioned that if I want to join his lab, pass the scholarship and the university entrance exam. Lastly, I contacted a professor in NAIST and he replied plus asked me to send my CV and academic transcript via email. Whoa!

Alright, so what's with the italic words? Those are samples of Japanese kind of refusal. If they mentioned something like the number of applicants, lab capacity, or have to pass something which we know that it is within impossible time and require too much effort or too costly, it means that they are softly refused us already.

March 2017. Letter of Recommendation Request, Research Proposal and Study Plan Writing 

As April comes near, I hurried back to my campus to meet my previous thesis and research supervisor. Meeting him was not an easy task. Barely meet him in the lab. He had been so busy with teaching and seminars. So I asked his assistant who was the hero during my research. He used his budget for us to go to a conference in Japan. May God bless you far more than my gratitude, sir. He told me to put the request with a memo on his desk, and several days later my supervisor told me that the letter was ready to be taken. The recommendation letter is easy, no need to use university header or some sort. Just have your supervisor answer the questions and sign at the bottom. Last but not least, have it stamped by the university. The same goes for my employer, but this one is easier to meet and he was so supportive. No hassle.

So, recommendation letters are done. Now about the Research Proposal and Study Plan. I used several sources from those who passed the same scholarship and got big help from my cousin who currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Hiroshima Univ. in checking my proposal, email to profs, and study plan. I am bad at words honestly. For the research proposal, my previous supervisor assistant helped me with the content writing, the flow and how to make it concise. Thanks to him I could write my proposal better. Really, when he said to make the purpose clearer, my head spun and I had a slight fever for several hours.

For the study plan, I wrote my entire study plan including a timetable, in the end, to make it colorful and easy to comprehend. Everyone likes pictures, no? It looks somewhat like this:

Study Plan Timeline Example

There are some explanations before the timeline, but at least the reader will find it easier rather than reading the texts, right?

April 2017. Online Registration for MEXT Scholarship 

Even I have prepared the documents needed, the application form wasn't available until the online registration opened. Just fill it and don't miss any column. The important point here is your photo should be glued to the application form. Don't print it together with the form. Use photo paper if you are going to print it yourself and make sure it's size is as requested. Put your name and nationality on the back of the photo. The registration opened and the deadline was in 2 weeks. The hardest part of this scholarship is the document screening which you will have to go through twice!

I just want to point out several things here:

1. Just follow the instruction given on the website. If you have any questions, ask the embassy. You may either come or call them.
2. The photos should be original for all the copies. Even it said 1 original form and 4 copies of the original, the photos glued on those 5 forms should be original. Don't stick it on the original form and then copy it 4 times. Don't even think to print it together with the application. Don't tell me I didn't warn you.
3. If you can type all the answers, type with Roman Capital letters. Use black color and follow the font.
4. Just write down any universities or labs you want to get in (no need to contact them yet at this point), you may change it later if you passed the interview. It would be nice if you have contacted them before the interview tho.
5. Use A4 sized papers. If you can't resize the copy of your transcript or diploma, please consult with the embassy. In some universities, their diploma is huge AF. Usually, the embassy staff will tell you to fold it to A4 size.
6. Put everything in order for each copy. The documents are 9-10 parts each with 4 copies, arrange them as instructed. Original[1-9/10], Copy[1-9/10] (1-4)
7. Don't staple the documents or put any hole.
8. Simply divide each copy with a clip. Original, Copy-1, Copy-2, Copy-3, copy-4

May 2017. Skype Interview and Application Submission

The next thing to do is continue finding your future professor if you haven't got any. In my case I only got one from NAIST. He was asking if I can do Skype interview. He asked me about my motivation and what I want to do about my research, the purpose, why choosing his lab, whether I understand what I wanna do, or just simply bluffing. You know what, I was sweating a lot from my neck to my lower back in 20C degree room. My shirt looked like someone who had run for half an hour. Luckily he didn't see that. LOL. That's all, he wished me good luck with the scholarship.

After those long and hard times, I planned to submit the application on the day before the deadline but it turned out that I'm late, so I submitted the documents on the D-Day. If you can give it directly to the embassy, great. Otherwise, you have to make sure the documents arrived at the embassy before the application submission closed.

My prayer this time: "If this is Your way, let it be. If it is not, let me fail on the first screening."

[Cont. to part.3]...