Long-form pieces on the Advanced Placement program, the IB Diploma, university preparation, and other core topics for internationally minded families.
Most parents researching academic decisions encounter two kinds of writing: marketing from schools and programs, or scattered forum posts. Neither serves the families we work with, who arrive at our doors with substantive questions about their child's academic path.
The Harland Review is a third register. Each editorial is a structured guide, fact-checked against primary sources, drawn from our work with families. Every piece includes its sources. We publish editorials when they are ready.
The questions this publication addresses are not unique to Harland. Families across the international school community, in Taiwan and beyond, face the same academic decisions. We share these editorials openly in the hope that they are useful wherever you read them.
Start with the cross-cutting overview, or scroll to the cluster that matches what you are weighing.
Curriculum, culture, and university outcomes vary more across Taipei's established international schools than rankings suggest. A guide to Taipei American School, Taipei European School, Kang Chiao, Fuhsing Bilingual Division, and their peers, and the families each best serves.
A newer generation of Taipei international schools operates under the Experimental Education Act, offering project-based learning, smaller cohorts, and structures designed around how students learn. A guide to VIS @betterworld lab, HWGI, LIFT, TMIS, and TCS, and which families find their fit there.
The decision that matters most in the IB Diploma is not the final score but the Higher Level subject grid. How selective universities read the HL transcript, what the trade-offs are, and how to approach subject selection.
TOK looks like philosophy and functions like a writing course. What the component is, how it is assessed, why it matters, and how to support a student taking it.
A guide to the IB Extended Essay, focused on the reformed structure first assessed in May 2027. How the new framework changes student preparation, what universities and examiners look for, and what families should be doing now.
The Advanced Placement program lets students take individual advanced courses rather than committing to a fixed program. Freedom is the strength and the risk. How to approach AP subject selection when there is no required structure, and what universities look for in an AP transcript.
AP Capstone is the structured exception within the Advanced Placement program: where regular AP courses are chosen individually, the Capstone Diploma requires a specific sequence. What AP Seminar and AP Research require, how the Capstone Diploma differs from earning regular AP credits, and which universities recognize the credential as meaningful.
A guide to the digital SAT format and how preparation should adjust now that the test is fully digital. How the test adapts to a student's responses in real time, where students commonly underperform, and when to start preparing.
Test-optional is not test-blind, and the line between them matters. How universities use scores when submitted, which institutions have moved past standardized testing, and how to read each policy honestly when planning university applications for an international school student.
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Send us a question or topic on LINE (@Harlandtw)These editorials are structural. The decisions in front of your family are particular. Our Student Coordinator speaks with families regularly.