From our other sites
The story
Data released by Waseda University on the hometowns of its 2026 general-admission successful applicants showed that the four greater-Tokyo prefectures — Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama — accounted for about 80% of all successful applicants, while Tottori, the lowest, had just two. On the thread, posters repeatedly shared the sense that the number of students advancing from top regional high schools to Waseda and Keio has been shrinking year after year amid a growing preference for national/public universities, with some pointing out that moving to Tokyo at all has become difficult given tuition costs and soaring Tokyo rents. At the same time, some argued Waseda is now ‘essentially just a regional Kanto university,’ and comparisons with the hometowns of Nobel laureates sparked further debate, with opinions clashing over the reality of Tokyo’s overwhelming concentration of resources.
The Sankei Shimbun, October 25, 2026, 09:00
Waseda University published, in its 2027 edition school guide, the number of successful 2026 general-admission applicants broken down by the prefecture of their high school. The top four spots — accounting for about 80% (11,496) of all successful applicants (14,957) — were swept entirely by the four greater-Tokyo prefectures. Although Waseda draws students from high schools nationwide, a clear ‘polarization’ was visible.
Tokyo ranked first with 6,225 successful applicants, more than double second-place Kanagawa’s 2,547. Third-place Chiba (1,467) and fourth-place Saitama (1,257) each individually had roughly three times as many as fifth-place Aichi (443). This underscored both the overwhelming advantage of applying from the greater Tokyo area and a strong tendency for students to stick close to home.
Source: sankei.com / Read the original article here
What people said
Why would someone go to Waseda, where 70% of it sits around a hensachi of 50?
Getting in through general admission from the countryside is tough.
It's not just Waseda — Tottori probably barely sends anyone to Todai, or even nearby Kyoto University, lol
And yet apparently they're still treated as elite, prestigious schools locally.
Well, top public high schools in the regions only care about national universities — private universities? Please, lol
60 years ago, that same prefectural high school used to send in 3-4 every year.
Even Osaka's top public school only manages this much?
It really shows how different high school entrance exams and university entrance exams are.
High school entrance exams come down to not messing up fairly easy questions.
Re: #43
Waseda/Keio are admittedly still a cut above Tottori University (medicine aside), but the way they get practically deified in the Tokyo area doesn't fly with people from the regions — since even kids from third-tier high schools can get in.
They're ranked below the 'Kin-Oka-Chi-Hiro' tier (Kanazawa, Okayama, Chiba, and Hiroshima universities — a respected group of mid-tier national universities).
Trade balance by economic region:
Tohoku region: ¥2.8978 trillion deficit
Greater Tokyo region: ¥16.7037 trillion deficit
Chubu region: ¥10.03 trillion surplus
Kinki region: ¥2.0901 trillion surplus
Kyushu region: ¥488.7 billion surplus
Admits from Osaka prefecture high schools — Todai / Waseda / Keio
2005: 47 / 365 / 234
2010: 50 / 225 / 198
2015: 56 / 281 / 162
2020: 57 / 235 / 177
2025: 53 / 190 / 137
2026: 55 / 159 / 117
Admits from Fukuoka prefecture high schools — Todai / Waseda / Keio
2005: 79 / 348 / 157
2010: 75 / 213 / 162
2015: 84 / 244 / 150
2020: 75 / 155 / 117
2025: 72 / 181 / 96
2026: 89 / 182 / 96
Osaka Prefectural Kita High School — 2026 university placement results
<National/Public Universities>
University: Admitted / Enrolled
Tokyo: 7 / 7
Science Tokyo: 1 / 1
Hitotsubashi: 2 / 2
Kyoto: 87 / 87
Osaka: 60 / 60
Osaka Metropolitan: 67 / 63
Kobe: 38 / 36
Hokkaido: 13 / 13
Tohoku: 4 / 4
Nagoya: 1 / 1
Kyushu: 1 / 1
<Private Universities>
University: Admitted / Enrolled
Waseda: 22 / 1
Keio: 9 / 0
Sophia: 4 / 1
Tokyo Univ. of Science: 5 / 0
Doshisha: 172 / 4
Ritsumeikan: 168 / 7
Kwansei Gakuin: 40 / 2
Kansai: 55 / 0
And it's not just Kita — even kids aiming for Todai don't bother throwing in a Waseda/Keio application as a backup anymore.
Osaka Seiko Gakuin — 2026 results (current students only)
Todai: 10, Kyoto: 32, Waseda: 4, Keio: 1
So basically nobody from Osaka's top school bothers with the top private university anymore?
Nobel laureates by high school of origin:
Osaka: 5 (Ibaraki, Imamiya, Sumiyoshi, Osaka Kyoiku Univ. Tennoji, Kita)
Kyoto: 3 (Rakuhoku x2, Doshisha)
Ehime: 3 (Matsuyama Higashi, Ozu, Mishima)
・
・
Kanagawa: 2 (Shonan, Yokosuka)
Tokyo: 1 (Hibiya)
Saitama: 1 (Kawagoe)
Chiba: 0
Ibaraki: 0
Tochigi: 0
Gunma: 0
Tohoku: 0
At my rural high school in western Japan, 30 years ago when I was a student we'd send 5-10 kids to Waseda every single year. Now it's a parade of zeroes.
Meanwhile, more kids are going to the nearby national university instead.
And the number of kids going to any private university in Kanto has plummeted out here in general.
Same deal here, also in western Japan. It's not just Waseda — other universities in the Tokyo area are the same way.
I really feel like these days, only pretty well-off families from the regions send their kids to a university in Tokyo.
And that's on top of rent and living costs beyond tuition, lol
AtHome (Ota, Tokyo), a real estate information service, announced on the 26th that the average asking rent for single-occupancy rental apartments in Tokyo's 23 wards in September was ¥114,460, up 0.1% from the previous month — a record high for the second straight month since record-keeping began in January 2015.
Tokyo 23 wards' single-occupancy apartment rent up 0.1% in September, hits record high
(Nikkei, October 26, 2026)
Top-scoring prefectures by correct-answer rate
National Academic Achievement Test 2025
Top-scoring prefectures by correct-answer rate
Me, I only even got into a national university because a teacher talked things through with my parents — private school was never even on the table.
My own oldest two kids are in private science/engineering programs.
Part of it is I wanted them to struggle a bit, so I made them live at home — within the Tokyo/Kanagawa/Chiba/Saitama area you can still commute from home.
Though plenty of kids who come from the regions end up renting a room or living in a dorm.
Couldn't you get a scholarship either?
So you, a bright kid from the regions, settled down in the Tokyo area, but your own kids didn't turn out quite as sharp, huh.
A coworker of mine who went through a science/engineering program at an old 'first-tier' national university had both his sons go all the way through grad school — one at Tokyo University of Science, one at Meiji's science/engineering department — and it nearly broke him financially.
Though he did say the one saving grace was that their house was in Saitama, so both kids could commute to university, lol
Outside of national/public universities, it's not that different from a private university out in the regions.
Compared to Waseda/Keio, going to some national/public university isn't worth it.
Maybe for you, but the general public's image is that private university is for the dropouts who couldn't get into a national/public school, lol
I think my old school was more Waseda/Keio-obsessed than most outside Kanto (probably still has the most Waseda/Keio admits in the prefecture),
but the top students were normally aiming for Todai, Kyoto, or a former-Imperial-university med school — Waseda/Keio were strictly the safety net.
I myself got into Waseda's Political Science/Economics and First Literature departments, and Keio Law, and turned them all down.
Only the former Imperial universities (or better) are good enough to turn down Waseda/Keio for.
If you're turning down Waseda for some regional 'ekiben' university [a lower-tier local national school] just because 'it's national,' that's just dumb.
If you're turning down Waseda/Keio, it'd have to be Todai, Science Tokyo, or Osaka University at minimum.
Regional former-Imperial universities are clearly a notch below Waseda/Keio.
Though honestly, the kind of students who apply to Waseda/Keio don't even bother applying to regional Imperial universities to begin with.
It's not so much 'turning down Waseda' — they just don't apply there in the first place. It's not even on their radar.
It's not the mindset of 'I'd love the Tokyo/Waseda brand, but since it's out of reach I'll go national instead.'
It's simply not an option for them to begin with, and the attitude is more like, 'what would I even get out of it?'
Today's middle and high schoolers have a completely different mindset from mine — I'm from the 'ice age' generation [those who graduated into Japan's brutal lost-decade job market].
Probably because Nishi-Taiwa Gakuen makes every single student take the exam.
The 'basically zero Tokyo-born laureates' problem
Not one laureate graduated from a Tokyo high school — the closest case went to junior high in Aichi (Susumu Tonegawa).
The remaining 27 are all from regional public schools.
https://asahi.5ch.io/test/read.cgi/newsplus/1634479436/
As of 2025:
Still holding true in 2026:
Kenzo Hakoai — graduate of Hiroshima University's affiliated high school
Of the roughly 25 years Tonegawa spent in Japan, he only spent three and a half years in Tokyo (from the summer of his third year of junior high through his third year of high school).
Even when he was a 'ronin' [retaking entrance exams after failing], he deliberately went to a cram school in Kyoto.
Guess Tokyo just didn't agree with him.
Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, who received the Order of Culture, said at a press conference recently that the experience of growing up in the countryside has stayed with him in his bones, and that he credits it for who he is —
but yeah, Tokyo and Seoul really do have terrible living environments when it comes to raising kids.
But they don't have a medical school, right?
Seems like it'd be easy to land a job with the local government, Kyushu Electric Power, or Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, though.
Background and key points of this discussion
The decline in Waseda/Keio admissions from the regions can’t be explained away as simply ‘falling regional prestige.’ Behind it lies a mix of factors: shrinking applicant pools in the regions due to the falling birthrate, a growing preference among top regional high schools for national/public universities, and economic pressures such as the tuition gap (Waseda/Keio cost over ¥1 million a year versus roughly ¥530,000 at national universities) and Tokyo’s soaring cost of living. The thread was divided over whether to read this as ‘Waseda/Keio’s brand power declining’ or as ‘a structural shift in how students in the regions approach university.’ It’s easy to overlook that admission-count data doesn’t reflect application numbers or competition ratios — so it isn’t necessarily true that regional perception of these schools has actually dropped.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Waseda] Waseda admits ranked by hometown — Four Tokyo-area prefectures account for 80%, exposing a polarization; Tottori lowest with 2 — Waseda.”
Leave a Reply