Gao-pu-kao (高普考) is the everyday name for two examinations Taiwan’s Ministry of Examination (考選部, MOEX) runs together each year: the Senior Civil Service Examination Level 3 (公務人員高等考試三級考試, gao-kao) and the Junior Civil Service Examination (公務人員普通考試, pu-kao). Together they are the main entry route into the general civil service of the Republic of China, filling posts across ministries, city and county governments, and the agencies under them. MOEX itself sits under the Examination Yuan, one of the five branches of Taiwan’s government, and is responsible for organizing, administering, and grading the exam.
The two tiers are distinguished by the minimum education a candidate must hold. The Senior Level 3 exam requires a bachelor’s degree in any discipline; a separate Senior Level 2 exam requires a master’s degree and a separate Senior Level 1 exam requires a doctorate, though those two run less frequently and outside the scope of this page. The Junior exam requires only a senior secondary (high school) diploma or an equivalent qualification, which makes it the more accessible of the two mass-recruitment tiers. Candidates must be citizens of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and at least 18 years old; beyond that, the Civil Service Examinations Act leaves most eligibility detail, including any category-specific requirements, to the recruitment announcement (招考簡章) MOEX publishes for each year’s cycle.
Both exams share the same written structure. Every candidate sits two common subjects regardless of category: a Chinese-language essay paper (國文) and a combined Legal Knowledge and English paper (法學知識與英文), which is objectively scored. On top of the common subjects, candidates sit professional subjects specific to the category (類科) they apply under, covering fields such as general administration, law, finance and economics, civil engineering, and information management, among dozens of others MOEX opens each cycle. Senior Level 3 candidates sit four professional papers; Junior candidates sit three. A small number of categories, including Overseas Chinese Affairs Administration and International Cultural and Educational Administration, add an interview (口試) after the written papers, which factors into the final score at a fixed weight for those categories only; most categories are decided on the written papers alone.
Registration is entirely online through MOEX’s national exam registration portal (register.moex.gov.tw), with a per-subject fee that MOEX raised by roughly 25.8 percent starting with the 2026 exam cycle, after more than a decade without a general adjustment. For the 2026 (Minguo 115) cycle, online registration ran from March 10 to March 19, the Junior exam was held July 3 to 4, and the Senior Level 3 exam followed July 5 to 7. Vacancies for that cycle were finalized at 7,232 positions after agencies filed additional staffing requests, split between 4,655 Senior Level 3 posts and 2,577 Junior posts. Competition is real but not extreme by regional standards: roughly 53,869 people registered, about 37,317 actually sat the papers, and 7,960 were ultimately recorded as passing, a pass rate near 21 percent across both tiers.
Passing the written exam does not by itself guarantee a specific rank or pay grade; those are set by the position an agency assigns after the results are released. As a general reference, Senior Level 3 passers are appointed starting at Rank 6, Junior Grade (薦任六職等) in Taiwan’s civil-service pay structure, while Junior exam passers start at Rank 3, Junior Clerk grade (委任三職等). Technical categories such as engineering, machinery, and information management typically draw a higher professional allowance on top of the same base pay as other appointees at the same rank, since the base pay itself does not vary by category within a given rank.
Candidates preparing for gao-pu-kao should treat the current year’s official recruitment announcement, published on the MOEX website, as the governing document for their specific category: it sets the exact subjects, weighting, interview requirement if any, and any age or physical requirements tied to that category, none of which are safe to assume from a previous year’s cycle.