Elite Science Student Visit Abroad Program (ESSVAP)

The Faculty of Science had started the "Short Visit Program" back in 1999 to provide undergraduate students the opportunity to see the world in a broad perspective. The program was renamed as "Elite Science Student Visit Abroad Program" in 2006 to send the very best students among Juniors and Seniors to the top universities in the world. So far, the accumulative program participants are 128 in total. The 8th ESSVAP will be carried out in March 2015.

Note: The grade of the students are as of participating year

7th UCSB, Caltech and UCLA (2014)

6th Yale & Princeton (2013)

The United States of America is always in the frontier of science and leads the rest of the world. That is because researchers all over the world gather in the U.S. and compete to each other every day. It is natural, therefore, that there are many top-class universities in the US: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UC, MIT, and so on.

In this program called "Elite Science Student Visit Abroad Program (ESSVAP)", we visited two universities that are famous in the East Coast: Yale and Princeton.

What do the ideal places for research look like? What kind of differences are there between Japan and the US? How the University of Tokyo looks from people outside Japan? It was a meaningful and inspiring stay in the US to find answers to those questions.

5th Columbia, Princeton and Rockefeller (2012)

We visited 3 universities – Columbia, Princeton, and Rockefeller.

Through our visit, we were able to gain many. By communicating with students and professors, we were inspired by international or American ideas. In the previous year, the University of Tokyo declared to eventually shift its school year so that it starts in autumn. Our experience may become a guide for this and other reforms for internationalization. We also hope that this program became a benefit for our counterparts in the universities we visited.

4th National University of Singapore (NUS) & Nanyang Technological University (NTU) (2010)

For the ESSVAP2010, 11 science students visited National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

Singapore is a smallest country in Southeast Asia, but with as many as 4.7 million people on small islands. The government makes every effort to invite great researchers from all over the world and places great importance on education. And Singapore is a nation regarded as very clean and safe like Japan.

3th UC Berkeley & Stanford

Blessed with the forever wonderful weather conferred by the subterranean climate, California is the apple of the eye of the whole US. Moreover, it is the home of two world-famed Universities, i.e.-UC Berkeley, the number one public college both active mentally and physically, and Stanford which is always contending for the first place in the world with Harvard and Yale. With the emotion of both curiosity and admiration, 10 undergraduate students designating the Science Faculty, U of Tokyo, paid a visit to these 2 celebrated universities this year -Berkeley for 5 days and Stanford for the rest- intending to appreciate the greatness of the two colleges.

2nd Cambridge & Oxford

Two cities, so called "Oxbridge," are themselves universities.

In these towns, most of pedestrians are somehow involved in their universities. Cambridge and Oxford university are famous not only because of their profound history, but also of their research throughout entire academic field.

Therefore, Elite Science Student Visit Abroad Program in 2008 (ESSVAP2008) decided to visit "Oxbridge" for the purposes of catching their flavor and exchanging experience in students.

1st Harvard University & MIT

Science Student Visit Abroad Program (ESSVAP) is a program for selected students of the science department to visit universities abroad. The main objects of this program is to know about the standard of research for our study after this, to understand the system of foreign universities and to strengthen interaction with such universities through laboratory tours, meetings with professors and discussions with foreign students. This program was conducted under the name of "Short Visit Program" six times until last year. The name was changed this year to advance the international exchange all the more and it is the memorable first activity of ESSVAP this year. Selected students are as follows.