While around 126,000 Taiwanese high-school students will join the competitive Joint College Entr-ance Examination today to vie for spots at Taiwan's universities, the 200 graduating students from Taipei American School (台北美國學校, TAS) have long had their futures planned -- 99 percent of them will attend universities in the US.
In this school whose student body is split 20:80 between Westerners and pupils with ethnic Chinese roots but foreign citizenship, going to the US for college education is a natural choice.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
"TAS provides an American college preparatory curriculum ... It is just like an American factory, located in Taiwan, manufacturing products especially for colleges in the US," said Geoffrey Lee, an 11th-grade student at TAS, and an "ABC," or American-born Chinese.
Taiwanese universities are singularly unpopular destinations for TAS graduates.
In the class of 1999, only 2 went to a Taiwanese college. In that of last year, there were only four.
The reason is simple: Taiwanese parents send their children to the school to sharpen their English-language skills to pave the way for entrance to an American college.
As the US remains a dominant power in the world, and most Taiwanese are very receptive to its culture, Taiwanese parents have long been keen to send their children to study in the US. And if they want to keep their children close to them while receiving an American education, TAS -- the largest and oldest of Taiwan's nine American schools with 2,100 students and 52 years of history -- will be their top choice.
Founded in 1949 by missionaries and expatriate business leaders, TAS has reflected the evolution of the US-Taiwan relationship. During the period from 1954 to 1978, while the US retained a military presence in Taiwan, the vast majority of the school's students were children of military personnel.
process of evolution
Since the withdrawal of US forces in 1979, the school has evolved into a college preparatory school with a strong academic program and international reputation. Beginning in the late 1980s, the school served increasing numbers of returning expatriate Chinese from over 40 countries.
But nowadays, an overwhelming majority of students are of Taiwanese ethnicity with foreign citizenship. Parents of the school's students are members of diplomatic and trade missions or are academics, engineers, doctors, politicians, and proprietors of family businesses.
The school's alumni have excelled worldwide in many fields. There are countless distinguished alumni in Taiwan, including Nita Ing (殷琪), president of the Taiwan High-speed Railway Co (台灣高鐵), Taiwan actress and director Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉), movie star Takeshi Kaneshiro (金城武) and Linda Arrigo, democracy activist and former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh's (施明德) ex-wife.
Access to the school is the exclusive preserve of a privileged few. It costs around NT$500,000 a year to attend the upper school. Annual tuition in a public Taiwanese senior high school is NT$20,000.
Being wealthy is not the only criterion; the school also requires students to hold foreign citizenship.
Students include children from prominent families in academia, business, politics and the arts. One of this year's high-profile graduates is Stanley Tzeng (
"Students form a separate community there, and do not find it easy to mingle with locals because they speak different languages, and behave and think like Americans," said a student who graduated from TAS last year.
"Given that most students are from affluent and distinguished families, students tend to be somewhat egocentric and overbearing. They can also be materialistic, constantly competing over material belongings," said the student, citing the annual senior prom as an example.
Senior prom is traditionally one of the highlights of high school for American students. At TAS it is held for juniors and seniors prior to commencement and is part of graduation festivities.
"Students first have to find a date. Nobody would go without a date. Then they worry about their appearance -- the hairdo, the gowns, the tuxedos. Even the car you drive to the prom is an issue. There is a lot of peer pressure."
Learning in an environment so detached from the outside leads some students to develop identity crises. Their confusion sometimes leads to delinquent behavior and tension with the local community.
an alien culture
"People call us `third culture kids.' The culture here is not totally American, nor is it entirely Taiwanese. It is a unique TAS culture -- students form a different culture from the community in which we live," said John Wu, a student who graduated this summer and is going to the University of Southern California.
"We have to adjust ? People can be hostile to us because we are not traditionally minded."
Clashes between the locals and the school's students have occurred due to a lack of mutual understanding and the students' occasional boisterousness.
Two years ago, 20 TAS students were involved in a fistfight with the borough chief of Tienmu, where the school is located, when the students were warned not to vandalize walls inside a Tienmu park. In a bid to show the power of their connections, the students threatened to seek assistance from the American Institute in Taiwan.
But some of the students said that they consider being part of an "in-between culture" to be advantageous, saying that it gives them opportunities to see and experience more of the world than they otherwise would and that they benefit from exposure to the traditions of both East and West.
Asked what they considered to be the school's particular strengths, students and parents all cited the school's high-quality programs and teaching staff.
The school is said to be ranked the third-best international American college preparatory high school in the world. Parents said that it provides courses that foster a love of learning, and cultivates analytical abilities and creativity. Students are encouraged to ask questions and their individual opinions are respected. Projects and oral presentation take the place of the multiple written tests that are prevalent in ordinary Taiwanese high schools.
"When my son went to the local schools, he hated going to school. But his attitude changed completely after he was transferred to TAS. There must be something about TAS that made that change for my son," said Daisy Hung (洪蘭), the wife of Minister Tzeng.
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
WARNING: From Jan. 1 last year to the end of last month, 89 Taiwanese have gone missing or been detained in China, the MAC said, urging people to carefully consider travel to China Lax enforcement had made virtually moot regulations banning civil servants from making unauthorized visits to China, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Several agencies allowed personnel to travel to China after they submitted explanations for the trip written using artificial intelligence or provided no reason at all, the Control Yuan said in a statement, following an investigation headed by Control Yuan member Lin Wen-cheng (林文程). The probe identified 318 civil servants who traveled to China without permission in the past 10 years, but the true number could be close to 1,000, the Control Yuan said. The public employees investigated were not engaged in national
The zero emissions ship Porrima P111 was launched yesterday in Kaohsiung, showcasing the nation’s advancement in green technology, city Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said. The nation last year acquired the Swiss-owned vessel, formerly known as Turanor PlanetSolar, in a bid to boost Taiwan’s technology sector, as well as ecotourism in Palau, Chen said at the ship’s launch ceremony at Singda Harbor. Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) also attended the event. The original vessel was the first solar-powered ship to circumnavigate the globe in a voyage from 2010 to 2012. Taiwan-based Porrima Inc (保利馬) installed upgrades with
ENHANCE DETERRENCE: Taiwan has to display ‘fierce resolve’ to defend itself for China to understand that the costs of war outweigh potential gains, Koo said Taiwan’s armed forces must reach a high level of combat readiness by 2027 to effectively deter a potential Chinese invasion, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) published yesterday. His comments came three days after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the US Senate that deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan requires making a conflict “cost more than what it’s worth.” Rubio made the remarks in response to a question about US policy on Taiwan’s defense from Republican Senator John Cornyn, who said that Chinese
RSS