Application path · Prep to arrive

High School in Japan · The Minor's Guardianship-First Route

After completing nine years of schooling abroad (equivalent to Japanese lower-secondary), you enter a Japanese high school directly on the "Student" (留学) residence status. What sets this apart from adult study-abroad is that minor supervision comes first: whether it works at all usually hinges on who guards the student, where they live, and who funds them — either a parent-co-residence model (public full-time schools typically require living with a guardian) or a school-boarding model (private schools fold the dormitory form, health/vaccination records, pledge, financial sponsorship, and proof of kinship into the COE document chain). Grade placement and admission are not a single national standard but rest on each principal's discretion over age, ability, and course-equivalence, with transfer entry weighing earned credits most. On finishing, you can move on to Japanese universities via the general, recommendation, or comprehensive selections, or to a senmon-gakko — but mind the exit trap: graduating from a Japanese high school often disqualifies you from a university's privately-funded international (私費外国人留学生) or returnee (帰国生) tracks, and your classification depends entirely on that target school's募集要項 for the year.