Founded
1949

Marked its 75th anniversary in 2024-25

Curriculum
American + AP/IB

US standards-based; 31 AP and 37 IB courses in the Upper School

Years
PreK–12

Ages 4–18 across Lower, Middle and Upper Schools

Location
Tianmu, Shilin

Single 15-acre campus, northern Taipei

Structure
Not-for-profit

Hybrid board: 9 elected parents + 5 appointed members incl. AIT

Accreditation
WASC

Accredited since 1972; reaccredited Spring 2024

2026-27 cost
NT$956,770–1,055,105

Plus NT$50,000 deposit and a one-time NT$350,000 capital fee

The short version

The short version

Taipei American School (TAS) is an independent, not-for-profit day school founded in 1949, teaching pre-kindergarten through Grade 12 on one campus in Tianmu, in Taipei’s Shilin District.

The curriculum is American and standards-based, with the Upper School offering both Advanced Placement courses (including the AP Capstone Diploma) and the full IB Diploma — TAS has been an IB World School since 1981.↗↗

For a relocating family, the practical summary is this: TAS is the default American-system option in Taipei and one of Asia’s long-established international schools, with deep college-counselling infrastructure aimed mostly at the United States. Entry is competitive, priority is set by parent passport, and only foreign (non-ROC) passport holders may attend under Taiwan’s foreign-school rules.

If your family wants a British, French or German national pathway, the peer to compare it against is Taipei European School; if you want the American pathway, TAS is the reference point every other Taipei option is measured against.

What the school is

An American school with Taiwanese roots and a US governance spine

TAS is organised in three divisions — Lower School (pre-K to Grade 5), Middle School (Grades 6-8) and Upper School (Grades 9-12) — each led by its own principal.

Mandarin is part of the programme from the early years, and the school describes a broad American curriculum with a global perspective, more than 200 courses in the Upper School, and a one-to-one laptop environment.↗↗

The school is incorporated in Delaware as the Taipei American School Foundation and governed by a hybrid board of up to 14 members: nine elected by the parent body (the Taipei American School Association, in which every enrolled family holds membership) and five appointed, including one representative of the American Institute in Taiwan — the de facto US mission.

All board members are volunteers. TAS served as a US Department of Defense contract school during the American military presence in Taiwan, and was reorganised as a private international school after 1979; the AIT relationship still shapes its first admissions-priority category.↗↗↗

Scale matters here. School-supplied recruiter data puts enrolment around 2,370 students with roughly 324 faculty, 85% of them holding advanced degrees, on a 15-acre campus with three gyms, three theatres, a 25-metre indoor pool and a dedicated STEAM building opened in 2018.

This is one of the larger international schools in the region — which brings depth of programme, and also means a child can be one of hundreds in a grade.↗↗

Who may attend

The defining rule: foreign passports, and a passport-based queue

Taiwan’s licensed schools for foreign nationals may not enrol local-citizen children, and TAS states the rule plainly: a child must hold foreign (non-ROC) nationality and reside in Greater Taipei with at least one parent or guardian.

Families document this with the child’s foreign passport plus a second supporting document — an ROC entry/exit record, an ARC/APRC, or US documents such as a Social Security card, birth certificate or consular report of birth abroad.

Many TAS families are dual-national Taiwanese households using a second passport; the school’s published rule, not a handshake, is what decides eligibility.↗

Admission priority is set by the parents’ passports, not the child’s. Category 1 is a parent employed by the American Institute in Taiwan; Category 2 is a parent holding a US passport; Category 3 is both parents holding non-US passports, with additional priority for siblings of current students and children of alumni.

The school reports receiving more applications than space each year, with many grade levels full by April for first-semester entry — so a Category 3 family arriving mid-cycle should treat waitpools as a real possibility, not a formality.↗

Academics in practice

Accreditation, outcomes and the AP-versus-IB choice

TAS has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) since 1972, with its most recent reaccreditation completed in Spring 2024.

It is a member of NAIS, EARCOS and the Global Online Academy, and one of the six IASAS schools — the athletic and cultural circuit with International School Bangkok, International School of Kuala Lumpur, International School Manila, Jakarta Intercultural School and Singapore American School that shapes much of the Upper School’s sports and arts calendar.↗↗

Unusually, students can mix AP and IB: the Upper School offers 31 AP courses and 37 IB courses, and with a counsellor’s approval students may combine them, finish the full IB Diploma, or build toward the AP Capstone Diploma alongside the TAS US high-school diploma.

The school is also a PSAT/SAT test centre for its own families. For parents, the real question is not whether both exist but how the school steers a given child toward one track — ask how many students in a cohort take the full IB Diploma versus a mixed programme.↗↗

On outcomes, the school’s own Class of 2025 profile counts 205 graduates — 10% of whom spent their entire school career at TAS — with about 85% matriculating to US colleges and universities, and Canada, the UK, Korea, Japan, Australia and the Netherlands the next most common destinations; students typically submit 10-13 applications each.

We do not reproduce IB or AP score distributions here because cohorts change yearly; ask the admissions office for the current school profile and read results against cohort size.↗

Admissions and cost

Admissions mechanics, fees and the calendar

Applications open on 1 August of the preceding school year and are reviewed on a rolling basis; most Semester 1 decisions land between March and May, Semester 2 decisions from mid-November to late December. The application fee is NT$10,000 (NT$5,000 for reapplications and returning students).

Applicants to Grades 5-12 submit standardised scores — ERB CTP, most US state tests, SSAT, PSAT, SAT or ISEE, with the ISEE offered at TAS for applicants without scores.

Age cut-offs run to 1 September, and minimum English-development stages apply by grade: students new to English are welcomed in early elementary, but from Grade 3 upward children must access the curriculum with increasing independence.↗

TAS is explicit about the scope of its learning support: it accepts students with mild learning differences, and states that students with moderate or severe learning difficulties cannot be adequately supported and are not offered admission — and that admission to one grade does not guarantee the next if a child’s needs grow beyond what the school can staff.

Families with any learning-support history should put their documentation in front of the admissions team before applying, not after.↗

The published 2026-27 total annual cost is NT$956,770 for pre-kindergarten through Grade 5 and NT$1,055,105 for Grades 6-12, billed across two semesters, plus a NT$50,000 non-refundable enrolment deposit (new and returning students) and a one-time NT$350,000 capital fee for new students.

Budget beyond these lines — bus, lunch, devices, activities and exam fees add up — and confirm the capital fee’s exact scope (per child or per family, refundability) with the school, since that line is large enough to change a multi-year budget.↗

The family experience

Tianmu life and what parents actually report

The campus sits in Tianmu, the northern Taipei suburb where much of the expatriate community has historically lived, directly across from Taipei Japanese School. After-school activities for the younger years run largely through the independently operated Taipei Youth Program Association (TYPA) on campus — parents report these are popular, sometimes pricey, and can be oversubscribed.

Housing, commute and the after-school plan are worth testing at school-run time before signing a lease.↗↗

Parent sentiment is consistent on two points, and we report it as attributed experience rather than fact. First, the lower school draws sustained praise — Foreign Service post reports describe excellent early-years teaching that pushes children while keeping school fun.

Second, several long-running parent reports describe the student body as predominantly local dual-national families, and warn that newly arrived expat children — especially in the middle and upper years — can find social integration harder than at more internationally mixed schools; one 2016 report called it “a local school with an American curriculum.”

How much this matters is family-specific, but it is the single most useful thing to probe on a visit: ask how many new-to-Taipei students join each grade each year, and what the school does to fold them in.↗↗

Two smaller notes from the public record. TAS is a fundraising school in the American independent-school tradition — a 2020 community blog described advancement-office donation calls to parents, and the school’s own rules state it does not accept donations from families during the application process, which is worth knowing before anyone offers.

And the same 2020 reporting documented a parent petition over discipline and governance transparency — a reminder that even schools with seventy-five years of reputation have live parent-relations questions worth asking about.↗↗

Our readConfidence: Medium

The American-pathway reference school — if the passport and the fit line up

The documentary record on TAS is strong: first-party fees, eligibility rules, priority categories and learning-support limits are all published in plain language, the WASC accreditation is current, and the IB authorisation dates to 1981.

Our confidence is Medium rather than High because this edition is document-based — we have not visited — and because the most decision-relevant texture (how a new expat child integrates into a largely dual-national student body) comes from parent reporting that, while consistent across years, is still attributed experience rather than verifiable fact.

The fit questions are unusually clear-cut. TAS suits families who want the American system with an AP/IB upper school, hold Category 1 or 2 priority (or can apply early from Category 3), plan to aim at US universities, and have children without moderate-to-severe learning-support needs.

It suits them less well if they need British, French or German national curricula (that is Taipei European School’s lane), need an all-through sibling solution in a small school, or want a strongly international-mixed peer group.

Within its lane, TAS is the school every Taipei American-curriculum shortlist is measured against — which is exactly why you should still visit with hard questions rather than apply on reputation alone.

Take these to the school

Questions that move beyond the tour script

Eligibility and admissions

  1. Which priority category does our family fall into, and what does the waitpool look like right now for our child’s grade and entry semester?
  2. How many places typically open in our child’s grade for new families, and when are decisions communicated?
  3. What standardised scores should we prepare for Grades 5-12 entry, and can our child sit the ISEE at TAS?

Academics and support

  1. May we see the current school profile: IB and AP score distributions with cohort sizes, and the latest matriculation list?
  2. In a typical Upper School cohort, how many students take the full IB Diploma versus AP or mixed programmes — and how is that choice counselled?
  3. Exactly what does “mild learning differences” cover in practice, and which needs would fall outside the scope of support?

Community and cost

  1. How many students joining this grade are new to Taipei each year, and what does the school do to integrate them socially?
  2. Beyond the published tuition, deposit and capital fee, what should we budget in year one for bus, lunch, devices, activities and exam fees?
  3. Is the NT$350,000 capital fee charged per child or per family, and under what conditions is any of it refundable?

Continue your research

Choose your next step

City guideInternational schools in TaipeiPlace TAS in the full Taipei landscape — the foreign-passport rule, fees across schools and the neighbourhoods families weigh.Peer schoolTaipei European SchoolThe other anchor of a Taipei shortlist: British, French and German sections with IGCSE and the IB Diploma on two campuses.Regional contextInternational schools in Hong KongThe region’s deepest international-school market — useful if your posting is not yet fixed to Taipei.Regional contextInternational schools in TokyoTokyo’s American and international schools are the most common cross-comparison for TAS families.Curriculum guideIB vs British vs American curriculaConfirm the American AP/IB pathway is the right one before you commit to a school built around it.School directoryAll researched schoolsSee which profiles are live and which cities open next.City directoryAll city guidesCompare Taipei with every other city we have researched.

Sources and further research

Where to verify and keep reading

We favor direct links to the exact page or document a family may need next. Access dates matter because admissions, tuition, leadership, and programs change.