American Pacific International School (APIS).

The campus, and how you actually get there

Address: Main Boarding Campus: 158/1 Moo 3, Hang Dong–Samoeng Road, Ban Pong, Hang Dong, Chiang Mai 50230 · APIS Primary: Mae Hia, Mueang

Two distinct sites with two different characters. The Hang Dong main campus is a spacious semi-rural boarding campus in the foothills; the Mae Hia primary campus is a smaller, suburban school inside the city's ring-road belt. The split is deliberate — young children stay close to town, older students get the boarding estate.

Getting there: No urban rail, and this is the longest routine run of any Chiang Mai international school: the main boarding campus sits roughly 25 km from the city centre out along the Hang Dong–Samoeng Road, towards the hills. Allow 35–50 minutes from the city core and plan around the school bus rather than a daily self-drive if you can. The Mae Hia primary campus is far more convenient — a suburban site inside the ring road, close to Mae Hia's markets and the Canal Road corridor. Families with children at both campuses should ask hard questions about the two-campus morning.

Chiang Mai has no urban rail — no BTS, no MRT, no commuter metro. The city's railway station serves intercity trains to Bangkok, and the long-discussed Chiang Mai light-rail scheme remains unbuilt, so every school run here is a car, a motorbike, a red songthaew, a Grab or the school bus. Read the Chiang Mai getting-around guide and the Chiang Mai area guides before you commit to a neighbourhood.

Smoke-season air quality at this campus

American Pacific International School (APIS) does not publish detailed smoke-season filtration information that we could verify from primary sources, so we are not going to imply provision that may not exist. That is not a criticism of the school — most Chiang Mai schools handle this well and simply do not document it publicly — but it does mean you must ask directly. The due-diligence list below tells you exactly what to ask.

Northern Thailand's burning season runs roughly February to April, when agricultural burning and forest fires push Chiang Mai high into the global air-quality rankings — IQAir placed the city among the ten most polluted in the world on 4 March 2026, with AQI above 150 and PM2.5 the dominant pollutant. For a family with young children this is a legitimate school-selection criterion, not a footnote. Our Chiang Mai air-quality guide covers the season in full.

The curriculum pathway

How a child progresses through the school, stage by stage:

• IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) — Pre-Nursery through Grade 6, at the Mae Hia primary campus
• IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) — the middle years, at the Hang Dong main campus; the Personal Project is completed in Grade 10
• Grades 9–10 — an American-standards high-school core (English, integrated sciences, individuals and societies, maths, design, arts, PE) alongside Thai and world languages
• Grades 11–12 — three routes to the same diploma: the standard APIS High School Diploma, the diploma plus selected IB DP courses, or the diploma plus the full IB Diploma
• 24 credits required to graduate, and every student — DP candidate or not — completes the IB Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) programme

Accreditation & memberships

Accreditation is the closest thing to an objective quality signal in international schooling — it means an outside body has inspected governance, teaching and safeguarding. BAANLYY does not rank schools, so this is what American Pacific International School (APIS) and its accrediting bodies publish, not our verdict:

• Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) — accredited since 2002
• IB World School — Primary Years Programme (from 2009), Middle Years Programme, and Diploma Programme authorised in 2020
• Registered with the Thai Ministry of Education
• Describes itself as Chiang Mai's first internationally accredited boarding school
• CEEB code 695404 — the code US universities and the College Board use to identify the school on applications

Boarding and the size of the school

Boarding: Day and boarding at the Hang Dong main campus, from Grade 5 upwards; the Mae Hia primary campus is day-only. Alongside Prem, this is one of only two established boarding options in Chiang Mai.

Scale: A smaller school than Prem, CMIS or NIS, split across two campuses, with a boarding cohort drawn from well beyond Chiang Mai. One number is worth knowing before you visit, because no directory publishes it: in the school's own 2025–26 high-school profile the Grades 9–12 cohort was 105 students with 14 graduates, and its nationality mix was 63.5% Chinese, 10.6% Thai, 9.6% Japanese, 7.7% American, 1.9% Korean and 6.7% other. "International" here means predominantly East Asian rather than evenly mixed — for some families that is exactly the environment they want, and for others it is the deciding fact. Ask for the current year's figures, since a cohort of this size shifts quickly. Roll and nationality figures move every year and schools report them differently — treat these as indicative and ask the admissions office for the current numbers.

Who this school tends to suit

Families who want the IB continuum with a genuine off-ramp: a student who thrives can sit the full Diploma, a student who would be crushed by it can take selected DP courses or the school diploma alone, and all three routes end in the same WASC-accredited certificate. It also suits families who need boarding from the middle years, and — very practically — those applying to United States universities, since the school holds a CEEB code and runs a dedicated college and career counselling office. The two-campus structure suits a family with a young child who wants a short suburban run now and a boarding place later.

This is our editorial read for relocation planning, not a ranking or a recommendation — and no school pays to appear on BAANLYY. Visit shortlisted campuses before you decide.

Living near American Pacific International School (APIS)

The southern and south-western suburbs serve both campuses. The BAANLYY area guides for this run:

Check the school's bus catchment before you sign. Chiang Mai's international schools cluster in two distinct belts — the northern one around Mae Rim and San Sai, and the far larger southern one through Hang Dong, Mae Hia and Saraphi — and picking a home in the wrong belt turns a fifteen-minute run into a daily hour.

What to confirm directly with the school

BAANLYY deliberately does not publish per-school tuition figures: they change annually, schools publish their own current schedules, and a stale number is worse than none. Take this list to the admissions office:

• Which of the three graduation routes your child would take, and when the school expects the choice to be made. This page previously reported that sources disagreed over whether Grades 11–12 sat the IB Diploma or an American Advanced Placement pathway; the school's own 2025–26 high-school profile resolves it, and we have corrected the page accordingly. There are three routes — the standard APIS High School Diploma, the diploma with selected IB DP courses, or the diploma with the full IB Diploma — and no Advanced Placement courses appear anywhere in the school's published Grade 9–12 course list. If a directory or agent tells you APIS is an AP school, they are working from an out-of-date description. Confirm it with admissions rather than with us.
• Which IB Diploma subjects will actually run in your child's year. The school's own 2025–26 course list shows several offered in one year but not the other — DP Physics and DP Mathematics AA HL appear for Grade 11 only, DP Spanish for Grade 12 only — which is normal in a senior cohort of around a hundred students, but decisive if your child needs a specific higher-level subject for a university course.
• Boarding availability by year group, and whether weekly or full boarding is offered for the age you need.
• The practical logistics if you have children at both the Mae Hia and Hang Dong campuses — bus timings, drop-off windows and whether a single run is possible.
• Smoke-season filtration on both campuses — APIS does not publish the building-by-building detail that Prem and Panyaden do, so ask.
• The current fee schedule — tuition, application and registration fees, any refundable deposit or capital/development levy, uniforms, lunches, the bus and trips.
• Whether the year group you need has a place, or a waitlist, for your intended start date.
• Smoke-season provision in detail: which buildings are filtered, whether the sports halls and canteen are included as well as classrooms, whether indoor and outdoor AQI readings are published to parents, and the school's written policy for cancelling outdoor activities. This is the single most important Chiang Mai-specific question a family can ask, and provision varies enormously between campuses.
• School bus routes, catchment zones and pick-up times for the specific neighbourhood you are considering — several Chiang Mai schools sit well outside the ring roads, and a home ten minutes further out but on the route can be the easier morning.
• Entry requirements: assessments, interviews, English-language support and the school reports or transcripts you must supply.
• How far the school takes your child, and on which exam pathway — Chiang Mai mixes American/AP, Cambridge IGCSE and A-level, and IB Diploma routes, and switching between them mid-secondary is disruptive.

Visit the official American Pacific International School (APIS) website →