You Will Need a Visa

You Will Need a Visa:

US citizens are allowed into Taiwan for 90 days without a visa.  If you are studying abroad for longer than that, you will need to apply for a visa.  You will be getting a resident visa (there is no separate student visa).  This is a huge pain, or at least it was for me.  I tried to do it on my own and got nowhere.  When I called, the people working at the Taiwanese consulate in NYC were simply unhelpful. In the end, I ended up hiring a company to take care of the process for me.  I used passportsandvisas.com, but there are others.  I was assigned  a person to oversee my application process (his name was Adam, and he did a great job!).  I was told what documents I needed, and I sent them to the company’s office by mail.   Documents must be hand-delivered to the consulate, so you are not only  paying the service to gather the documents for you, you are also paying them to wait in line at the consulate for you.  It cost about 90 USD; but when you account for the time and money it takes to travel to the closest Taiwanese Consulate (for me it was in NYC about 3-4 hours away), and the time and hassle of applying for it myself, I think it was a good deal.  

DO NOT WAIT TO DO THIS UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE

This process takes a while, and for me, about a month once I hired the company.  For a resident visa, you will need to do medical forms too.   These can be completed by your primary physician.  They ask for some pretty strange things such as a “stool sample” from “three different movements”, blood work, and even a chest x-ray. (As I am sure you noticed on your National Taiwan University application there is a medical examination for the school. I recommend combining these two medical forms and doing it in the same visit to your physician).  Make sure these forms are sealed and signed by your doctor too.  If they aren’t, the consulate will not accept them and send them back to you since you might have “tampered” with them.  All in all, start the process early, months in advance if you can.