Mates Inc. (Head office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director: Naonori Endo), operator of WAYS, a private tutoring school specializing in integrated junior and senior high school students, will hold a free seminar for parents on Saturday, May 23, 2026, at TKP Garden City Osaka Umeda. The seminar is titled “The Golden Route for Integrated Secondary School Students: A Career Strategy Seminar to Balance Regular Exams and Eiken® and Win Admission to a Preferred School.” The seminar is mainly intended for students and parents from integrated junior and senior high schools with many WAYS students enrolled at its Umeda-area classrooms, including Umeda, Tennoji, Uehonmachi, Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi, Shijo-Karasuma, and Yamato-Saidaiji. It will introduce regular exam preparation methods unique to a specialized tutoring school, as well as career strategies centered on the use of Eiken®. As university admissions increasingly shift toward decisions being finalized before the end of the calendar year, high school grades and external English test scores are becoming major factors in admissions outcomes. According to a 2025 survey by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 53.6% of university entrants secured their destinations through comprehensive selection or school recommendation-based selection. Meanwhile, 478 universities, or 63% of all universities, use external English proficiency tests in admissions, and Eiken® accounts for 91.6% of the tests used by applicants. Integrated junior and senior high schools often move quickly through coursework and assign heavy workloads, leaving many parents concerned that their children do not study enough at home or cannot improve their regular exam scores. Drawing on its experience teaching more than 15,000 integrated secondary school students, WAYS will present concrete strategies for balancing regular exam preparation with Eiken® certification while aiming for admission to a preferred university. The