ENEB Master Thread

[nykorn]

I have a new technique for studying for and passing ENEB and other titulo propio.

Use Anki. Download the AnkiBrain extension. Take the reading PDFs, run them through a program like ABBYY Fine Reader to reduce the file size significantly because some aspects of AnkiBrain charge you according to file size. Do NOT upload files to their file storage system, I wasted quite a few cents figuring that out. In your PDF, remove all index, introductory, and other obviously useless pages.

Go to the "Make Cards" section. Customize the prompt of AnkiBrain to say "make cards very concise. do not repeat the question in the answer". Upload your edited PDF. For the most part it makes flashcards exactly like I would have.

It costs around 10 cents to make 100 flashcards. One ENEB chapter may turn into 500 flashcards. You'll still see some garbage cards you'll have to remove as you study, but the majority are good.

It can even translate information for you, so you could register for the Spanish ENEB Masters, upload the Spanish PDFs, and have it output flashcards in English. It can also translate to some minority languages which are technically unsupported. I tested it with some IRS documents and it could translate all kinds of technical tax stuff to Esperanto even though it wasn't an officially supported language.

I tried telling it to explain concepts to me using the PDFs as reference material, it did a terrible job. The plain flashcard making function is far superior. In order to explain concepts, I now use Perplexity AI (entirely free and online) which is a lot smarter than ChatGPT and the Explain section in AnkiBrain.

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I would love to know if anyone knows whether Japan immigration could grant entry for a work visa (Gijinkoku) with an ENEB/Isabel diploma. wait, can I even enroll in ENEB without a bachelor's degree to back it up tho?  I dropped out of college a long time ago, unfortunately

1) Years ago, there was a page on the MEXT scholarship website of Spain which explained titulo propio qualified for the MEXT scholarship in Japan. As MEXT is a Japanese government scholarship, that signifies to me that Japanese Immigration would accept titulo propio as equal to university degrees at the time. HOWEVER, that was a while ago, things could have changed, and I don't believe anyone has tested it. I did know a lady from Spain who almost certainly got a work visa to Japan on a titulo propio (her major was fashion design, not exactly a normal university degree) but that was way back in like 2012. You should look up a list of some of the most common titulo propio as well as international equivalents and try to see if anyone got to Japan using them without work experience.

I looked into the actual laws written in Japanese at the time, and all the laws stated was that to get a work visa you need either a finished post-secondary education worth at least 2 full years of education (of which an Associate's degree counts), or you needed at least 3 years of work experience in the field. It did NOT even mention anything about accreditation as far as I can remember. You would do good to go check the actual Japanese laws. 

Additionally, a good thing to know is Immigration is actually laxer than employers are. It is extremely difficult to find a job willing to hire you on only an associate's in Japan, or at least it still was pre-COVID, yet the law says it's ok. The same is true for USA Immigration, those guys accept foreign credit evaluations many employers wouldn't. And I can vouch for that Japanese Immigration doesn't look at degrees and transcripts too closely because there was a mistake on mine they didn't catch.

Honestly, if you don't need to go to Japan right now, I would start getting work experience in the field you want to work in in Japan asap, and have 3 years of experience plus the ENEB degree by the time you go.

I plan to go to Japan again in a couple years, at that time I will use ENEB alongside a normal Master's degree. If they give me a long-term Highly Qualified Professional visa valid for 5 years or so, it means they accepted ENEB as a valid Masters. If they give me a normal 1-year validity visa, it means they didn't. If no one else goes to Japan for us before then I will be the test.

2) ENEB doesn't require a finished degree for admissions. You have past college credits and assumably some kind of work or volunteer experience you can offer up as relevant if they do ask. My advice is don't worry about it, just buy a program when it comes on sale.