APU International School (Elementary)

APU is the established American-curriculum option for Vietnamese and dual-passport families in District 11, with a California-aligned programme, AP and SAT on site, and a US university pipeline.

Founded in 2004 by the APU Educational Development Group, APU runs an elementary campus on Lac Long Quan and a middle and high school on Lanh Binh Thang, both in District 11, with a sister campus and boarding in Da Nang. The school is COGNIA and CIS accredited and is a College Board member offering AP, SAT, PSAT, and ACT testing on site.

The student body skews local. Families pick APU when they want the US curriculum and English immersion at a price well below BIS or AIS, and the school points to graduates placing into US universities as valedictorian and salutatorian. Independent parent voice is thin. Expat families looking for a deep international peer group usually choose elsewhere.

• Vietnamese-owned American-curriculum school across HCMC and Da Nang, framed by an ex-student as "basically an attempt at recreating a US prep school on Vietnam's soil," with AP courses and a US-college pipeline. Fees were quoted at around 18k USD upward for the upper grades.
• The school sits in the second tier of Vietnam's international scene rather than alongside ISHCMC, BIS or SSIS. r/Internationalteachers comments place AISVN, BVIS and APU in the band below the tier-1 trio.
• International School Advisor lists only two parent ratings, both five-star but from years ago and one barely substantive. The directory signal is too thin to anchor anything by itself.
• Glassdoor employee reviews aggregate to roughly across 70 entries with about 38% recommending the school to a friend. Teachers cite a friendly community and curriculum autonomy on the upside, and late or non-payment, leadership style and language-barrier issues with local administration on the downside. This is teacher-forum material rather than parent-facing, but the volume is large enough that the management instability A live concern is as a parent.
• The Da Nang and HCMC campuses are run together but parents and teachers describe them as separate experiences, with the HCMC operation the more established of the two.