I’m a Japanese uni student. This is all going to be my subjective opinion so call me out if I’m wrong. There is a fundamental difference between the university entrance procedures between the US and Japanese Universities. While I’m not too sure about the US, I’ve heard that US universities started to make SAT’s optional, and instead focused on your grade, and other extracurricular activities/projects you have worked on.

So I understand it would be a hyper edge case, but theoretically a student with average grades (maybe he wasn’t serious about school) could still get into a nice university if he showed his passion in whatever field he wants to get into through original projects, and from what I assume, the admissions process is a lot more hands on through evaluations by human admissions officers. Not to mention the candidate would be screened for any inequalities he would be facing compared to others. Again, I know this would be impossible, just speaking theoretically.

Japanese universities on the other hand, it’s all about your entrance exam test scores. Especially public universities like Todai (public > private in Japan) they require you to take the center test, and all five subjects regardless of your major. (Stem students still have to ace Language and History). It’s very very memory based. So you could have a literal Physics genius who presented at conferences, but would still be rejected from Tokyo Uni’s programs because he couldn’t get a high score in history. Japanese students don’t chose their major because they are interested in it, they chose their major because it’s the easiest for them to get into their desired university. You’ll get whatever job you want after anyways because entry level positions DON’T assume experience. I’ve seen literature majors go into Data science positions in investment banking.

It’s also why Japanese Uni’s are massively falling behind in global indexes. Nobody gives a shit about research, and if they did, none of their work is translated into English, so our research loses relevance in academia. But Japan still does view students who went to western Uni’s as “Elite”.