Yoder International Academy (YIA) exists to answer a problem that Taoyuan's only foreign school cannot. Taoyuan American School requires a foreign passport, so a Taiwanese family in the city that wants an English-medium, American-curriculum education for a child has, on the passport route, nowhere local to go. YIA, licensed by the Taoyuan City Education Bureau as an experimental education institute in 2019, admits students from Grade 6 to Grade 12 with no passport requirement, and its own profile shows that most of its graduating class hold none.
What distinguishes it from the experimental-school pattern elsewhere in Taiwan is how much it publishes and how far its recognition has gone. YIA has held full Cognia accreditation since 2022, is a College Board member and the only PSAT, SAT, and AP test center in greater Taoyuan, and publishes its enrollment, its fees, and a college acceptance list. For a young school, that is an unusually open record, and it makes YIA one of the easier schools in this cluster to assess on evidence.
The families who look at YIA are usually Taiwanese families, often with a parent who studied or worked abroad, who want an American pathway for a child but hold only ROC passports. The question they bring is not whether YIA is eligible, since it is. It is whether an experimental institute of 167 students carries a child as far as a foreign school would: whether the transcript is recognized, whether the AP options are wide enough, and whether Taiwanese universities stay in reach alongside overseas ones.
Those are answerable questions, and this guide answers them from the school's own materials. The other question we see is preparation. YIA teaches in English to an American standard and keeps Mandarin and mathematics as required subjects for everyone. So a child arriving from a Chinese-medium school needs the academic English to work in an English-medium classroom, and a child arriving from an English-medium school has to keep pace in Chinese. We work with Taoyuan families remotely, the same way we teach families across roughly eight countries, or in person at our academy in Taipei for those who prefer it, and that readiness work is where we see the school from.
The orienting facts, each drawn from the school's own published materials, chiefly its 2025 to 2026 School Profile and its accreditation page, and checked in September 2026.
YIA is an experimental education institute under Taiwan's non-school experimental education framework, not a foreign school, which is precisely why it can admit the families the foreign schools cannot. It teaches an American, Advanced Placement curriculum in English and holds full US accreditation through Cognia. It is not an International Baccalaureate school. One distinction worth carrying: YIA is a member of the Council of International Schools, and membership is not the same as CIS accreditation.
YIA publishes a simple fee structure on its admissions page: a single tuition-and-fees figure per term, an application fee, and a set of pass-through charges it does not price. It is shown here as the school states it.
Two terms per academic year. The school's single figure covers administration, teaching staff, operations, and facilities.
| Grade band | Per term | Per year, two terms |
|---|---|---|
| Grades 6 to 12 | NT$162,000 | NT$324,000 |
The per-year figure is the school's per-term figure doubled, shown as Harland's calculation. The school publishes one rate across all grades rather than a schedule by grade band.
| Item | Amount | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Application fee | NT$1,000 | All applicants |
| Three-day trial attendance | Charged separately, amount not published | Applicants invited to trial |
| School bus, meals, books, uniform, holiday camps, after-school support | Charged at cost, amounts not published | As used |
| Refund on mid-term withdrawal | Per the Taoyuan City Education Bureau's refund standard | Transfers out during a term |
Source: YIA admissions page, fee information. Checked September 2026. The school does not label its fee figures with a school year, so confirm the current term's rate with the school directly.
| Grades served | Grades 6 to 12 |
|---|---|
| Enrollment | 167 students, 2025 to 2026, published by the school |
| New entry | Any grade from 6 to 12, by interview and a three-day trial |
| Curriculum | American, aligned to the University of California A-G requirements, with Mandarin and mathematics required for all |
| Advanced Placement | Three courses on the current roster: AP Precalculus, AP Calculus AB, AP English Language and Composition. 35 AP exams registered in May 2025 |
| Accreditation | Cognia, since 31 March 2022. Licensed by the Taoyuan City Education Bureau, August 2019, renewed 2022 |
| Memberships and test center | College Board member and PSAT, SAT, and AP test center. CIS member. British Council IELTS test venue. CEMC contest center |
| Eligibility | No passport requirement published, open to ROC nationals |
| University destinations | Published: college acceptance list, Classes of 2022 to 2025 |
| Graduate credential | Not published on the school's site |
Where a row reads "not published," the fact does not appear on any page the school publishes. Directory sites cite an enrollment of 51, which is out of date. The school's own 2025 to 2026 profile states 167.
YIA is the newest school in this guide, but it arrived with a parent behind it and it gathered recognition faster than most young schools do.
The academy belongs to the Yoder education group in Zhongli, whose bilingual primary and junior high school has operated since 2010. YIA was licensed as an independent experimental education institute by the Taoyuan City Education Bureau in August 2019, the first in the city. The school states it is the only one licensed to admit students across primary, junior high, and senior high ages, though it enrolls from Grade 6. It passed its three-year evaluation in March 2022 and was granted continuation that July.
The same spring it earned full accreditation from Cognia, the US body formed from AdvancED, becoming the second Cognia-accredited institution in Taiwan and the only US-accredited one in Taoyuan. Membership of the Council of International Schools followed in June 2023, the sixth in Taiwan by the school's count, then College Board membership that November, the fourth in Taiwan, with test-center status, and the National Honor Society in November 2025, the first in Taoyuan. The school describes this as its distinguishing record, and on the evidence it is: a seven-year-old school with a fuller set of external recognitions than several older ones.
YIA runs an American program built to the University of California's A-G admission requirements, with two deliberate anchors to the Taiwanese system: every student takes Mandarin and mathematics as required subjects.
The week runs to forty required periods on a block schedule from 8:30 in the morning to 4:15 in the afternoon, with students carrying seven to eight courses a term. The core subjects for graduation are English language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, and a world language, three credits each, alongside physical education, the visual and performing arts, electives, and two years of a leadership and character development course the school requires of everyone. Graduation needs a minimum of 20.5 credits. Transcripts carry an unweighted 4.0 scale and no class rank.
Advanced study is offered through eight honors and advanced courses, three of them AP: AP Precalculus, introduced in 2024, AP Calculus AB, and AP English Language and Composition, new in the current year. The school notes that some students add advanced work independently or through online and college-level courses, and that 35 AP exams were registered in May 2025. The roster is narrow beside a large foreign school's and a family should weigh that honestly, though YIA's status as the area's AP test center means the exams themselves are on site. Around the core sit English support classes, creative writing, TOEFL and SAT preparation, theme courses from drama to golf, overseas holiday programs, and student-led clubs after 4:15. As the school states, it is an American program, not an International Baccalaureate one.
Two questions a family asks of any experimental institute, whether its credential is recognized and where its graduates go, and YIA answers both on its own site.
On recognition, YIA holds full accreditation from Cognia, granted on 31 March 2022, alongside its Education Bureau license. That is accreditation, not candidacy, and it is the recognition that makes a YIA transcript legible to universities abroad. The school is also a College Board member with its own CEEB code, and a member of the Council of International Schools and the International Association for College Admission Counseling. It is worth keeping one distinction straight: CIS membership is a professional affiliation, and the school does not claim CIS accreditation. What the school does not publish is which formal credential its graduates receive, whether a US-style diploma, the experimental-education certificate Taiwan issues, or both. That is a question to put to the school directly.
On outcomes, the school publishes destinations in two places, and they read slightly differently. Its 2025 to 2026 profile lists acceptances across the Classes of 2022 to 2025: the University of California campuses at Los Angeles, San Diego, Davis, and Irvine, Boston University, Northeastern, Penn State, and Case Western in the United States, Toronto, British Columbia, and Waterloo in Canada, Durham, Bristol, and Glasgow in the United Kingdom, and Melbourne, Sydney, and Queensland in Australia, among others. Its website's acceptance page covers the Class of 2025 alone and names seven destination countries, adding New Zealand and South Korea to that list. Its 2025 to 2026 profile describes a graduating class of sixteen, 40 percent holding a US passport, and states that all of its graduates matriculated to universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan in the autumn of 2025. Two honest notes. The profile labels this cohort the Class of 2026 while describing fall 2025 matriculation, so the labelling is the school's own. And an acceptance list records offers across four classes, not where each student went, so read it as evidence of reach rather than a placement rate. The Class of 2025 was the school's fourth graduating class.
The school describes the family it is looking for in three lines: students and parents who want American education combined with the strengths of Taiwanese schooling, students aiming at universities "both internationally and in Taiwan," in its own words, and students still exploring their own interests and direction. Applications run year-round through an online form, and the school's own eight-step process is unusually specific. A staff member telephones the family after the form arrives, and a campus visit follows with a one-on-one introduction to the program. Then come an interview and a three-day trial in class, documents, review, an admission decision, and registration with payment of the first term's fees.
Two practical points follow from that sequence. The three-day trial is the assessment: rather than a written entrance examination, YIA watches a child work in its own classrooms, which rewards a student who can already function in an English-medium lesson. And because Mandarin and mathematics are required for everyone, a child arriving from an English-only environment is assessed for those too. The school does not publish an English-proficiency threshold, a fixed application deadline, or waitlist rules, so timing for a specific grade is a question to ask at the first call. The application fee is NT$1,000, and the trial days are charged separately.
Harland is not a school and does not replace YIA. We are a 1-on-1 tutoring academy, and we work with Taoyuan families remotely or in Taipei, in the three places the schooling decision creates real work for a family: getting in, building the foundation, and the university years.
YIA admits students from Grade 6 to Grade 12. As a Taoyuan experimental education institute it publishes no passport requirement, and its own profile shows that a majority of its graduating class hold no foreign passport, so it is open to Taiwanese nationals.
Yes. YIA has been accredited by Cognia, the US accreditation body, since March 2022, and it is licensed by the Taoyuan City Education Bureau as an experimental education institute. It is also a member of the College Board and the Council of International Schools, though CIS membership is not the same as CIS accreditation.
The school publishes tuition and fees of NT$162,000 per term, two terms a year, plus an application fee of NT$1,000. Bus, meals, books, uniform, and camps are charged separately and the school does not publish those amounts.
An American curriculum aligned to the University of California A-G requirements, with Mandarin and mathematics required for every student and three Advanced Placement courses on the current roster. It is not an International Baccalaureate school.
The school publishes acceptances for its Classes of 2022 to 2025 spanning the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan, and states that all of its most recent graduates matriculated to universities in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan.
Our Student Coordinator speaks with Taoyuan families regularly, and can help you work out how the trial days work, what readiness in English and in Chinese looks like, and how to prepare, all before you visit. We work with Taoyuan families remotely or in Taipei. We start by listening.