Education system : Japan vs other countries

[Maciamo]

but can you clarify what you mean by this? Because in England unversities set required grades for entrance into their courses, which vary from low to high exam passes. Unless you mean what I think you do, and that they don't require *extra* exams to be taken (except prestigious uni's like Cambridge, which require a very hard Maths extension exam to be done if you want to do maths there)

Yes, that's what I mean. there are no "extra exams" between the final exams of secondary school (whatever they are called) and entering university. In Japan, "juuken" are given by each university independently, regardless of which school one comes from. So they have the exam twice, but only the university entrance exam seems to be difficult, not the one to "graduate from highschool" (to use the AmE expression). Some universities have specialized entrance exams for subjects like engineering or medecine, but most subject do not require it.

However, contrarily to the UK's A levels, I think that in most continental European countries, it doesn't matter how well one performs in each subject or even overall. People just pass or fail. If you pass, you can go to any uni and study any subject and that's it. However, the failure and drop out rate at university is extremely high. At my university, only about 10 to 20% of the students entering manage to graduate. In Japan, I heard the success rate is close to 100% (probably 95% or so) because the "juuken" have already made the selection.

[bossel]

I think that in most continental European countries, it doesn't matter how well one performs in each subject or even overall. People just pass or fail. If you pass, you can go to any uni and study any subject and that's it.

In general this correct for Germany, too. The exception are some subjects where there are too many applicants for a university place. The places are distributed by the ZVS, which is the "Administrative institution for deciding on and awarding admittance to certain academic majors, admittance to which is restricted by an N. C. [numerus clausus] (e.g. medicine, law, pharmacy, dentistry)."