Judgment day, Pt 1

Today at 12pm was when the high school entrance exam results are posted. A few teachers went to the individual high schools in the morning and phoned the results back to the staff room. Students have been streaming back to school for the past couple hours to find out their fate.

Here's how entrance to a Japanese high school works. There is a prefectural-wide standardized entrance exam for all the public high schools. Each school take a combination of that test score, plus each student's Jr. high grades, application essay, face-2-face interview, etc. (different for each school) into account when making their choices of admission. But in reality admission is still heavily weighed by entrance exam results.

The stupid thing is, each student can only name one "choice" of public high school for which to take the test. Yes, although the test is all the same for all public high schools, each student can only test for a single one. Failing that, the student is basically shit outta luck. For kids like this, the only options are:

1) Private high schools. These you can test for as many as you'd like and is a viable and safe option in metro areas like Tokyo where the quality of private schools usually equal or surpass their public counterparts. And since private school tests are on different days than the public ones, most students take private school tests first as backup (in metro areas, kids take public school tests, which are generally worse, as backup). Unfortunately, private schools in an inaka like Tottori are basically dumping grounds for rejects and academic dead-ends for those with university aspirations. Also, they cost a shit ton more.

2) Sit out and try again a year later. These kids are called 浪人 ronin, homeless samurai. Kawabata Misaki 川端雅樹 is an example, a 3rd year student from last year who repeated another year of jr. high this year (I think most ronin enter cram school fulltime instead). A great thing for a teeanger's psyche really. I think he passed into Yonago North this time, but I have never seen a more defeated 16 year old than him this past year. Every time he shows up for school (sparingly) is like minor celebration of him not yet comitting suicide.

3) Hope for the rare times when some schools don't fill their quota and open up a 2nd round of admission. A long shot even for the schools nobody wants to go. Near impossibility for the most competitive quality schools.

This year, 6 students failed to get into the high school of their choice. On the bright side, everyone passed entrance into a safety private school so they've got somewhere to go if they choose to.