上智大学 国際教養学部 FLA AO入試　英語志望理由書 提出例 (ﾊｷﾞﾘｱﾝ ﾊﾟﾘｯｻ 教授参考)

上智大学 国際教養学部 FLA AO入試　英語志望理由書 提出例 (ﾊｷﾞﾘｱﾝ ﾊﾟﾘｯｻ 教授参考)

Dear Admission Office,

I composed this letter in order to explain my interest and motivation in applying for the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese style management and corporate philosophy was venerated in business schools and academic books as the model case to build successful enterprises. It seemed like Japanese companies validated this assumption by capturing worldwide market share in diverse products, such as automobiles and electronics. However, many other Asian countries have outgrown Japan and they have exported great leaders to the world. It is presumably because those Japanese management practices worked well in a homogeneous society with low turnover with life time employment but not so much in societies with a high level of diversity and interdependence – globalization.

Globalization brought positive changes to our lives, but at the same time, it is casting challenges in many aspects of life – labor, security, culture, environment and basically everything. As a fact, widespread dissatisfaction is growing about the effects of globalization. Around the world, between nations and peoples, fault lines are starting to grow as represented by Brexit and the U.S. under the leadership of Donald Trump. From climate change, demographic crisis to technological disruption and economic inequality, the world faces myriad challenges that require multilateral solutions but there is no single formula that solves them all. All we know is, in the new world order in place, the rich benefit and people who couldn’t cope with the changes brought by the era of information and technology would suffer – outdated corporate practices too. Nonetheless, it is not entirely negative, American companies spent the last decades stripping off employee benefits but many new findings suggest that companies who did the opposite are over performing and it is a catch.

Ignorance is a blessing in one way. And very fortunately, we are able to live in our bubbles in a country economically established like Japan, unaware of what is happening in the world now. Although I can choose to do the same, I choose to take on challenges as the world has become “smaller” and I wish to be on the right side of the shift – which starts with competitive entrance exams, education in English, exposure to diversity, study abroad and to become an opinionated individual than conforming. In order to achieve that, the first step would be to get admitted to a school which promotes all the above, from liberal art studies in English to a flexible curriculum. I feel that FLA is the pioneer in its adoption in Japan, and it is my top choice since my sister had great learning experience during her 4 years at the school.

However, I strongly believe that progressive studies can often be west-centric, and I know we can potentially change that by voicing it to the world, which would contribute to better recognition of Asian heritage experts and activists. Each one of us students needs to be conscious of the authors of each text book and cultural background behind research data points. For that reason, rather than joining a school in the West, I believe it is a better choice to do equivalent study as liberal arts in Japan where I can develop a sense of cultural objectivity, study my own heritage and yet participate in a study abroad program to output what we have learned and absorb various approaches.

As the recent COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated, even though the world is intertwined, we still have a strong sense of national identity and we cope with things very differently. There is a lot we can learn from each other, and we can only do that by investigating past events with profound knowledge on cultural factors. That is why I came to think a combination of sociology and comparative economics is the best way to go about it. I can’t express enough in words, but I am very thrilled to join the school and study among other like minded students. Thank you very much for reading.