Every foreign-registered school in this guide requires a foreign passport. AAIA goes a step further than any of them: it publishes the order in which it prioritizes applicants. Children of American Institute in Taiwan personnel come first. Then students who, with both parents, hold US passports; then one parent; then the student alone. Fifth come holders of passports from other English-speaking countries, and sixth, everyone else with a foreign passport. Students holding only ROC nationality are not eligible at all.
No other school in greater Taipei is this explicit, and the candor is useful, because it tells a family exactly what the school is. AAIA was licensed in 2014 with the consent of AIT, the Ministry of Education, and the New Taipei City Bureau of Education, as New Taipei City's first international American-curriculum school. It is, by design and by published policy, the US-linked family's school in the Linkou corridor: American curriculum on California and Common Core standards, AP courses, faculty largely from North America, and an admissions ladder that puts American families at the front of it.
For a family near the top of that ladder, AAIA is close to purpose-built. For a family near the bottom, the picture is different, and made more so by the school's current reality: as of its most recent published notice, AAIA is full in all grade levels, with a waitlist. What that means practically is the subject of this page.
The school's own founding story, as it tells it, begins with saturation: New Taipei City, Taiwan's largest municipality, had no international or American school of its own, and its foreign-passport families were commuting to central Taipei schools that were increasingly full, with children parked on waitlists. Founder Allan Liang coordinated with the Ministry of Education to fill that gap, and AAIA opened in Linkou in 2016.
A decade on, the school faces the compliment of its own success: by its most recent published notice, AAIA is full in every grade level and operates a waitlist of its own. For families, that changes the practical advice entirely. An application to a full school is an application to a queue, and the priority ladder determines position in it: an AIT family or a US-passport student moves differently through that queue than a family applying on a non-anglophone foreign passport.
Our practical advice runs in three parts. First, apply early and treat the waitlist as real rather than decorative; rolling admissions mean places open mid-year when families relocate. Second, hold a live alternative: Morrison Academy Taipei, in the same district, runs document-and-interview admissions without a published nationality ladder. Third, use the waiting time: AAIA's English proficiency exam does not guarantee placement, so when a place does open, the student who is academically ready takes it.
AAIA's founding answered a structural gap. New Taipei City wraps around the capital and holds more people than Taipei itself, including a substantial population of foreign-passport professional families, yet until the mid-2010s it had no international or American school. Founder Allan Liang began coordinating with the Ministry of Education to change that, and in November 2014 the school received its founding license, with consent from the American Institute in Taiwan, the MOE, and the New Taipei City Bureau of Education.
The school opened in 2016 in Linkou, under founding principal Stephen Cravak, who continues to lead it. The location placed it ahead of the district's trajectory: the Airport MRT opened for service the following spring, putting the campus minutes from the A8 and A9 stations, and the surrounding area has since filled in around Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, the Mitsui Outlet Park, and waves of new housing. Morrison Academy's arrival in 2020 confirmed the direction: Linkou was becoming northern Taiwan's second international-school center.
The school is WASC accredited, College Board authorized for its AP courses, and independently funded, with a faculty drawn largely from North America. Its mascot is the Lion, its school year starts in August on the American calendar, and a decade in, it remains what its license made it: the school founded for, and prioritized toward, the US-linked families of New Taipei.
AAIA runs a standards-based American curriculum in English across grades 6 through 12, drawing on California State and Common Core standards, with AP courses at the top and a college-readiness program that is taught, not just advised.
The academic spine is conventional American college-prep: the core subjects benchmarked to California and Common Core standards, taught in English by a faculty largely certified in North America, with English-language support for students still building academic English. Advanced Placement courses run under College Board authorization for the upper grades.
The distinctive structural feature is the College and Career Readiness program. At most schools, university counseling is a resource students visit; at AAIA, students in grades 9 through 12 are required to enroll in college and career exploratory courses as part of the timetable, supported by a counseling ratio the school puts at roughly one counselor to twenty students. Whatever one thinks of dedicating timetable hours to it, the structure means no student reaches Grade 12 without having worked through the university question systematically.
Two further requirements round out the program. Service learning is a graduation requirement, with at least 80 hours across grades 9 through 12. And the school is secular: of the American-curriculum schools in this guide, Morrison, GCA, and TAAS all carry a faith affiliation, which makes AAIA's secular character itself a deciding factor for some families, particularly in the Linkou corridor, where the alternative is a Christian school.
AAIA publishes named university acceptance lists each year, with promotional framing around them. As with every school in this guide, we separate the verifiable record from the marketing, and note what is not released.
The published record is a run of annual acceptance lists the school describes as nine consecutive years of graduates admitted to top global universities. Recent years include offers the school highlights prominently: a first Oxford acceptance in the Class of 2024 alongside a sixth straight year of UC Berkeley and UCLA offers, and a 2025 list naming Oxford, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Toronto, St Andrews, and art and music schools including Parsons, RISD, and Berklee. The school further states that every student with results in hand was accepted to at least one university in its defined top tiers across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia; that is the school's own framing of its own data, and we leave it attributed.
Two readings to keep straight. These are acceptance lists, meaning offers rather than enrollments, and where graduating classes are compact, single students can account for multiple headline offers in the same year. And no AP score distributions or SAT averages are published, so the quantitative layer beneath the acceptance headlines is not publicly verifiable. The diligence move is familiar by now: ask admissions where the last two or three graduating classes enrolled, not just where they were admitted.
AAIA's admissions carry three defining facts: the foreign-passport requirement, the published priority ladder, and the school's current fullness. Together they decide most families' realistic path before any form is filled in.
Based on the school's published profile and policies. AAIA's filters are unusually explicit, which makes the fit assessment more honest than most: the school has already told you where you stand.
A readiness-gated exam, a waitlist, and an American classroom on the other side: the preparation case for AAIA is unusually concrete, and the waiting time is the preparation time.
For a school that is currently full, the alternatives are not hypothetical. These are the three most AAIA families weigh, starting with the neighbor.
A consultation with our Student Coordinator is the fastest way to think the decision through with someone who is not trying to sell you the school. We can talk through where your family sits on the priority ladder, how to prepare for the proficiency exam, or how to run an AAIA application alongside a live alternative. We start by listening.