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The story
A tally by the location of admitted students’ high schools, published by the University of Tokyo, shows that out of 2,990 successful applicants in the 2026 general admissions round, Tokyo alone accounted for 1,102 (37%), while the six prefectures of the Kanto region including Tokyo accounted for a combined 1,851 (about 62%). Tohoku, Hokkaido, and Shikoku together don’t even reach 5%. Opinions on the thread were split between those who see this as a natural outcome given the Tokyo metro area’s population and commuting convenience, and those who point to the concentration of exam-prep infrastructure — integrated middle-high schools and cram schools like Tetsuryokukai — as widening the gap with the regions. Also drawing attention was the fact that the share of Kanto-born students is rising even at regional former Imperial universities.
The University of Tokyo published, in its 2027 school guide, the breakdown by prefecture of high school location for the 2,990 successful applicants in the 2026 general admissions round. Tokyo and the greater Kanto region accounted for roughly 60%, demonstrating a clear regional advantage.
Tokyo alone, despite being a single prefecture, produced 1,102 admits (37%) — nearly 40% of the total — showing an overwhelming presence. Next came the six Kanto prefectures excluding Tokyo, with 749. Combined with Tokyo, that reached 1,851, or about 62% of all successful applicants.
(omitted)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
What's with you suddenly getting defensive?
Just a local university for 'Tonkin' (derogatory slang for Tokyo), lol.
Tohoku has a population of 8.1 million, Chugoku has 6.9 million.
Even factoring in access to UTokyo, Tohoku's number of admits is way too low.
If you live in Sapporo and fail to get into a national university, you end up at Hokkai-Gakuen (a private fallback school).
For people outside Kanto, UTokyo has no appeal.
Rent in Tokyo is expensive too, and honestly nobody dreams of living in Tokyo these days anyway.
People from depopulated prefectures only end up there reluctantly, for school, work, or transfers.
For science majors, Nagoya, Osaka, or Tohoku University aren't that different from UTokyo.
No idea about the humanities side though.
UTokyo's research funding is overwhelmingly the highest in Japan though.
But the share of Kanto-born students keeps rising at those regional ex-Imperial universities too.
At Tohoku University, Kanto natives make up 40% — more than those actually from Tohoku.
At Hokkaido University, Kanto natives are 30%, surpassing those from Hokkaido itself.
Even at Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, and Kyushu universities, the share of Kanto-born students has grown 1.5 to 2 times compared to 15 years ago.
There's no real benefit to going to Tokyo anyway.
The people who idolize Tokyo are the TV generation — 40-somethings and up.
English — 120 points max
Japanese — same
Social studies — same
Math — 80 points max
The math weighting is too low; a current UTokyo student told me you can pass even if you're bad at math.
I don't get why math, a garbage subject, is even necessary.
Back in my day they said whether you could score in math was what decided pass or fail.
There wasn't much of a gap in the other subjects.
The test is tuned so that scoring a bit over half is enough to pass, so if you're good at math it becomes a strength beyond its point allocation. The same goes for other subjects — if you're way ahead in just one, passing gets easy.
Hibiya High School is the fallback for the losers of the middle-school entrance exam race.
Re: #36
Though zero Nobel Prizes to show for it.
Yet for all that, they barely present at academic conferences or produce results.
Wonder why? I work in development at a certain automaker, and it's all Nagoya University grads there.
Well, in the automotive field, of course Nagoya University and Toyota Technological Institute grads would be more common.
Exams are man-made — artificial constructs where the answer is already prepared in advance.
The brain is an organ that evolved to predict the dynamics of discrete sets of natural phenomena.
AI is the embodiment of the former.
'Late bloomer' is the endpoint of the latter.
And on top of that, it's full of people who gamed the system with 6 years of integrated middle-high accelerated study, cramming in twice the study hours of a regional public high school's 3 years.
Isn't their actual ability pretty low, really?
A UTokyo professor said that the quality has dropped now that Tetsuryokukai (an elite cram school) alumni make up most of the student body — they lack natural intelligence and creative thinking, he said.
And since they've all walked the same track, homogeneity is high too. No way they can compete with today's famous universities abroad, where diversity, stimulation, and the chemical reactions between different cultures feed real strength.
It's a cheat, really — kids without real ability get finished off with accelerated cram learning.
It's a rigged system designed to let them scrape by and pass before the geniuses coming from the countryside catch up.
That's basically every student living in Tokyo or Osaka.
The only good national universities there are Hokkaido University and Tohoku University, though.
At both Hokkaido University and Tohoku University, the share of students from local high schools keeps shrinking.
That too, lol.
At UTokyo and Waseda/Keio, lateral connections from your high school give you an advantage — someone who just popped out of a random regional high school has no accumulated connections, lol.
Nishiyamato actually sends twice as many students to UTokyo as Koyo does, you know.
Background and Talking Points
The “School Guide” that the University of Tokyo publishes every year tallies admitted students by the location of their high school — not by where the student is actually from. Many students at Tokyo’s integrated middle-high schools (Kaisei, Azabu, Ouin, Tsukukoma, etc.) actually come from other regions, so a tally by school location doesn’t simply equate to the share of “local-born” admits. The thread split between those who see this skew as reasonable given population ratios and commuting conditions, and those who argue that the concentration of Tokyo’s exam-prep industry — from SAPIX through to Tetsuryokukai — is what’s widening the opportunity gap. Also drawing attention was the point that at Tohoku University and Hokkaido University too, the share of Kanto-born students has risen to the point of outnumbering local-born students, suggesting this isn’t a phenomenon unique to UTokyo but a structural shift spreading across the former Imperial universities as a whole — an easily overlooked point.
※This article is an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “UTokyo Admits Ranked by Region: Tokyo 40%, Kanto Region 60%, Tohoku/Hokkaido/Shikoku Combined Under 5% — UTokyo“.
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