“Entrance preparation” means two quite different things in Zürich, depending on which school system a family is in. I help with the mathematics side of both.

Moving into an international school

International schools here don’t run a single central exam. Admission usually rests on a child’s school reports, a teacher recommendation in maths (and English), and, once a place is offered, a placement assessment that decides which level or set they join. For a child arriving from another country or curriculum, that placement can matter as much as the admission itself: it’s the difference between starting the year appropriately stretched and starting it in a set that’s too easy, or badly out of their depth.

I make sure a student’s maths is genuinely where it needs to be for their target school and year, closing the quiet gaps a move between curricula tends to leave and getting them comfortable working through problems in English if they haven’t done so before. The aim is a child who walks into the assessment with the maths solid and the nerves manageable, and who lands in the right set on the other side.

Some schools also use reasoning tests, such as the CAT4, which are designed to measure aptitude rather than taught knowledge and aren’t really something to cram for. I’m glad to help a student get used to the style so the format holds no surprises, but I won’t pretend those tests can be gamed.

The Swiss Gymnasium exam (Gymiprüfung)

For families in the Swiss state system, the entrance exam, the ZAP, or Gymiprüfung, is a major event, and competition for places has tightened over recent years. With me, we take on the mathematics side of things (the word problems, fractions, geometry, and algebra that make up the maths paper), all while working accurately under time pressure.

One point worth stating plainly: the Gymiprüfung is sat in German. I teach maths in English, so entrance support works best for bilingual households, or for students already in the Swiss system who mainly need the maths itself shored up while the German side is handled elsewhere.

How it works

Entrance exams tend to arrive with a lot of pressure attached, often more from the worry around them than from the maths itself, so much of the job is getting a student to the point where the questions feel familiar and the exam feels ordinary. And I stay honest with parents about where a child actually stands and whether the timeline is realistic; at this stage, false reassurance helps no one.