Study in Taiwan: Admission, Cost, Visa and Scholarships (2027)

Taiwan runs its academic year on two entries, September and February, and its universities admit international degree students on their own timetables rather than through one national system. The result is that dates are set per university and often per round, and the good ones open early: National Taiwan University, the country's leading university, takes applications for a September 2027 start in two rounds, the first from 29 September to 5 November 2026 and the second from 1 December 2026 to 19 January 2027, with a separate August to September window for a February entry.

The decision that shapes everything else is the language of the programme. Taiwanese universities teach in Mandarin and in English, and the requirement follows the programme rather than the student. For a Chinese-taught programme NTU asks for Chinese at CEFR A2 or above, which it accepts as TOCFL Band A Level 2 or HSK Level 4. For an English-taught programme it asks for English at CEFR B2, accepted as TOEFL iBT 72, IELTS Academic 5.5 or TOEIC 785. Those are modest bars by European standards, and an applicant whose previous degree was taught in the relevant language, or who comes from a country on the university's English-speaking list, is exempted from a certificate entirely.

Taiwan also has an unusual safety net worth knowing about: conditional admission. An applicant who is otherwise strong but short on language can be admitted on condition, then has up to one year to produce the certificate, studying Chinese at the university's own language division in the meantime. The offer is cancelled if the certificate does not arrive inside that year. Not every route allows it; NTU's international sophomore entry, for example, does not.

Fees are charged per semester rather than per year, and international students pay roughly double the local rate. At NTU in 2026/27 a local undergraduate pays NT$25,230 to NT$39,560 a semester including fees, while an international undergraduate enrolled from 2011/12 onwards pays NT$50,460 in liberal arts, social sciences and law, NT$58,520 to NT$62,100 across science, engineering, agriculture and public health, NT$60,000 in the semiconductor programme, and NT$72,340 to NT$79,120 in dentistry and medicine. Two semesters make an academic year, so the annual figure is roughly double those numbers.

A last practical point about who counts as what: the categories matter financially. Overseas Chinese, Hong Kong and Macau applicants, mainland Chinese applicants and international applicants use different admission routes with different deadlines, and holders of Taiwan's MOFA scholarship or R.O.C. permanent residency are charged at the local rate rather than the international one.

⚠️ Residence permit rules, work rights and the government scholarship schemes were not read from Taiwanese government sources for this page and are deliberately not described here.