The Zurich Gymi entrance exam · ZAP 2027

The Zurich Gymi exam, in English: what your child actually sits on 8 March 2027

Updated 4 September 2026 · 11 min read · Written for parents in Zurich who did not go through the Swiss school system themselves

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Your child sits two papers on one Monday morning. German and mathematics, nothing else, both written and both in German — and for the Langgymnasium, mathematics is half the mark on its own. Everything you have been told about the Gymi — the courses, the pass rates, the six-month programmes — sits downstream of those three hours. This is what is in them, what the mark is made of, and the one rule that changes everything if your child is not at a Zurich state school.

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A child in Zurich working through a mathematics exercise book at the kitchen table with a parent sitting alongside Deutsch · Mathematik · Monday 8 March 2027
8,060 of 15,759 Just over half the entrance exams sat across the canton in 2026 were passed — 51.1%, which the canton itself calls its long-term average. Across the two gymnasium routes alone it was 48.2%.
Every date and figure is the canton’s ownThe exam date, the timetable, the weightings, the pass marks and the results statistics are taken from the Kanton Zürich pages for the Zentrale Aufnahmeprüfung and from the canton’s own media release of 12 May 2026, read on 4 September 2026. Where a number is ours rather than theirs, we say so.
Written in English, about an exam sat in GermanThis article does not translate the exam or soften it. It explains what your child faces, in the language you are reading in, and it is specific about the places where the German requirement actually decides the outcome — which is not only the German paper.
What we could not verify, we say plainlyThe canton publishes a Probezeit statistic page but no current headline percentage in its text, so we do not quote one. Nor do we repeat the pass-rate figures that circulate on preparation-course sites without a source.

The short answer

Two papers, one morning, and no third subject

The Zurich Gymi entrance exam — the Zentrale Aufnahmeprüfung, or ZAP — is sat on Monday 8 March 2027, on the same day for both the Langgymnasium and the Kurzgymnasium. It is written, it is in German, and it examines two subjects only: German and mathematics. For the Langgymnasium the mark is a quarter language and comprehension, a quarter essay and one half mathematics. Registration for the canton’s online portal opens on 1 September; the binding Anmeldung runs from 1 January to 10 February 2027 and costs CHF 50 for the school year.

The rule most international families have never been told: a child at a Zurich state school carries a Vorleistungsnote — their school marks in German and mathematics — and it counts for half the final result, with a pass at 4.75. A child at a private or an international school has no Vorleistungsnote at all. In the canton’s own words, «In allen anderen Fällen zählt die Vorleistungsnote nicht». Their exam result is the entire decision, and the pass mark is 4.5.

Source: Kanton Zürich, Prüfung für das Langgymnasium and Prüfung für das Kurzgymnasium, read 4 September 2026.

Which of the two

Langgymnasium or Kurzgymnasium — your child’s age decides, not your preference

There is one exam name and two different exams behind it. Which one your child sits follows from where they are in school and when they were born, and the two differ in timetable, in weighting and in who they are competing against.

 Langgymnasium (ZAP 1)Kurzgymnasium (ZAP 2)
Who sits itPupils in the 6th primary classPupils in the 2nd or 3rd Sekundarschule class, Abteilung A or B
Born after31 July 2012, for entry in 2027/2830 June 2010
Exam dateMonday 8 March 2027Monday 8 March 2027
Morning08:00–08:45 German, language and comprehension · 09:15–10:15 mathematics09:00–09:45 German, language and comprehension · 10:15–11:45 mathematics
Essay10:45–11:45, same morning13:15–14:45, after a break
Weighting¼ comprehension + ¼ essay + ½ mathematicsGerman 50% (essay and comprehension equally) + mathematics 50%
Pass mark with a Vorleistungsnote4.754.75
Pass mark without one4.54.5
FeeCHF 50 per school yearCHF 50 per school year

Kanton Zürich, ZAP pages for the Langgymnasium and the Kurzgymnasium, read 4 September 2026. The fee is charged once per school year even where a child registers for more than one school type, and it is not refunded.

Two things follow that families reliably get wrong. The first is that the Langgymnasium exam is finished by 11:45 — the whole decision about six years of schooling is taken in three hours and forty-five minutes of one morning, and a child who has never sat a timed written paper in German meets that format for the first time on the day unless somebody arranges otherwise. The second is that Zurich runs free school choice for its middle schools, so the exam is not a competition for a place at one named Kantonsschule; it is a threshold, and your child is measured against a mark rather than against the other children in the room.

What is actually in the papers

Mathematics is half the mark. It is also read in German

This is the part that is genuinely different for a family whose home language is not German, and it is not the part most people expect.

The German paper is not a language test for foreignersIt is composition and text analysis at the standard of a Swiss child who has been schooled in German. The Langgymnasium morning splits it in two: forty-five minutes of Sprachbetrachtung und Textverständnis, and a separate hour for the Aufsatz. Together they are half the mark. There is no oral component and no listening component — a child who speaks fluent German at the dinner table and writes it rarely will find the essay the harder half.
The mathematics paper is worth as much as both German papers combinedFor the Langgymnasium, mathematics alone is half the exam mark. It is a single hour. That is unusually good news for a child who has done mathematics in English and is confident with it — the arithmetic and the geometry travel across languages almost intact.
But the mathematics is set in German tooThe word problems are where we see the marks go, in our own teaching, with children who would have answered the same question in English without pausing. This is our observation from preparing candidates, not a cantonal statistic, and we would rather label it than dress it up as one. It is also the cheapest thing to fix: the vocabulary of Swiss school mathematics is small, finite and learnable in a few weeks.
There is no English, no science and no general knowledgeNothing your child does well in a British or American curriculum is examined here unless it is German or mathematics. That narrows preparation usefully — and it is why a strong report card from an international school does not, on its own, predict a pass.

The rule nobody tells you

At a state school your marks carry you halfway. At a private school they carry you nowhere

The Vorleistungsnote is the single largest structural difference between two children sitting the same paper on the same morning, and it is decided months before by which school they attend.

Your child is at a Zurich state school

They arrive in the hall with a Vorleistungsnote already banked — their own school marks in German and mathematics. The canton averages it with the exam result, half and half, and the pass mark is 4.75. A steady year of school reports is genuinely worth something on the day, and a bad morning is cushioned by it.

Your child is at a private or international school

There is no Vorleistungsnote. «In allen anderen Fällen zählt die Vorleistungsnote nicht» — the exam result is the whole of it. The pass mark drops to 4.5 to reflect that, so this is not a penalty. It is something more uncomfortable: there is nothing to fall back on. One morning, two papers, no cushion.

Neither situation is better or worse in the abstract. What changes is what preparation is for. A state-school child is topping up a mark that is already half-earned. A private- or international-school child is preparing for a single, unrepeatable morning — which is an argument for rehearsing the format under time, in German, well before March, rather than for doing more mathematics.

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Prices and packages

What tutoring costs, and how long you have to use it

Most of this article argues for doing less, not more. But if the revision genuinely is not working — the hours are going in and the marks are not moving — that is a teaching problem rather than a timetable problem, and it is what we are for. Hours are bought prepaid in blocks of 5, 10 or 20, and the discount is for paying upfront rather than for buying in bulk.

Specialist — CHF 95 an hour. Where almost all of this work sits: a subject that is being revised hard and is not moving, exam technique for the Matura, IB or IGCSE papers, and the Gymi and ZAP groundwork that has to be done in the morning-shaped way the real exam demands.

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The single-hour Specialist rate. Buy a package afterwards and it comes straight off, so the hour you already had is re-priced at the package rate too.

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Two clocks run and they do different things. The best-rate window is one month on five hours, two on ten and three on twenty — and it pauses automatically over your own canton’s school holidays. If it closes, nothing is taken: the hours you have already had are recalculated at the standard rate and the balance stays on your account. The package itself stays valid for twelve months, and we write to you at nine months and again at eleven, unprompted, while there is still time to use it.

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The calendar

What happens between now and the results

Five dates. Two of them are already open, and the one families miss is not the exam.

1 September 2026 — the portal opensPupils register with the canton for the ZAP from 1 September. This is not yet the binding application; it is how you get the login you will need in January. It is also the date that quietly starts the preparation year, because it is when most Zurich families first put the exam in their diary.
1 January to 10 February 2027 — the AnmeldungThe binding registration window, and it is a hard deadline. CHF 50 for the school year, not refunded, charged once even if your child registers for more than one school type. Gymnasium Rämibühl publishes its own dates within that window, so check the school as well as the canton.
Monday 8 March 2027 — the examBoth the Langgymnasium and the Kurzgymnasium, on the same day, in the schools’ own halls. The Langgymnasium morning ends at 11:45; the Kurzgymnasium runs into the afternoon with the essay at 13:15.
Late March to early April 2027 — the decisionThe canton posts the decision, and results can be viewed online the following day.
August 2027 — the Probezeit beginsPassing the exam admits your child provisionally. The probationary semester is the second hurdle, and it is the one nobody warns new arrivals about — see below.

The numbers, honestly

About half pass, and then there is a second hurdle

The pass rate is the figure every preparation course quotes and almost nobody sources. Here is the canton’s own, with the year attached.

15,759

entrance exams sat across all Zurich middle-school routes in 2026

8,060

passed — 51.1%, which the canton describes as its long-term average

48.2%

pass rate across the two gymnasium routes specifically

4,772

candidates for the Langgymnasium, up from 4,562 the previous year

Kanton Zürich media release, «Über 8000 erfolgreiche Aufnahmeprüfungen», 12 May 2026. Comparable figures: 52.1% in 2024/25 and 50.0% in 2023/24. Candidate numbers are rising with the population, not because the exam has changed.

Then the Probezeit. A child who passes the ZAP enters the gymnasium on probation for one semester and has to confirm on the inside what the exam said about them from the outside; a child who does not pass it leaves the school. The canton states that the majority pass and that the proportion is stable at a high level, but its Probezeit statistics page carries no current headline percentage in its text, so we are not going to quote you one. If a preparation course quotes a Probezeit figure at you, ask where it comes from.

What the 51.1% does and does not mean is worth being clear about. It is not the chance your child has — it is the outcome for a self-selected group who had already decided to sit it. And it is not a quota: Zurich sets a threshold mark, not a number of places, so your child is not competing against the room.

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What preparation is for

Six months is the norm here, and most of it is not new material

Zurich preparation courses typically run about six months, which from now reaches March almost exactly. What that time is actually spent on matters more than its length.

The format, under a clock

A forty-five minute comprehension, a one-hour mathematics paper and a one-hour essay, sat in that order in one morning. For a child who has never written a timed German essay, the first rehearsal should not be on 8 March. This is the cheapest single gain available and it does not require any new mathematics.

The German of the mathematics paper

Not mathematics, and not German — the intersection. The vocabulary of Swiss school word problems is small and closed, and a child who already knows the mathematics can usually close this gap in a few weeks. For international-school candidates this is where we would start.

Past papers, marked properly

The canton keeps an archive of past ZAP papers. Working them is common; having the essay marked against the standard the examiners actually apply is not, and it is the part that cannot be done from a workbook at the kitchen table.

One thing this article will not do is tell you that your child needs tutoring. A child at a Zurich state school with a solid Vorleistungsnote and comfortable German may need nothing more than past papers and a calendar. The families we are genuinely useful to are the ones where the exam is being sat in a second language, or where the mathematics is fine and the writing is not, or where there is no Vorleistungsnote and therefore no margin for a bad morning.

Families we work with

What families actually say

Named by first name and initial, with the city and the exact tuition they bought. These are the same three families on every page of this site — we do not restate a review under a different purchase to suit the page. Our independent Review Atlas profile stands at 4.9 out of 5 from 1,756 reviews.

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We have been extremely pleased with Good Tutors Finder. Our daughter’s tutor understands the IB Maths syllabus very well and quickly identified the areas where she needed more support. The lessons are focused, well prepared and include plenty of exam-style practice. Her confidence has improved enormously.

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Our daughter needed help strengthening her IB English essays and preparing for assessments. Her tutor gives thoughtful, detailed feedback and has helped her become much more confident with literary analysis and essay structure. The quality of the tuition has been excellent.

Anna M. · Zurich · IB English at home

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Good Tutors Finder found us an excellent tutor for our son’s Gymi preparation. She is patient, extremely well organised and knows exactly what the entrance examination requires. He is far calmer about the whole thing than he was in the autumn.

Martin K. · Zurich · Gymi preparation, 90-minute sessions

Questions

Common questions about the Zurich Gymi exam

When is the Gymi exam in 2027?

The Zurich Zentrale Aufnahmeprüfung is on Monday 8 March 2027, and both the Langgymnasium and the Kurzgymnasium sit it on that same day. Registration on the canton’s online portal opens on 1 September, and the binding Anmeldung runs from 1 January to 10 February 2027. The fee is CHF 50 for the school year and is not refunded. Decisions are posted in late March to early April, and results can be viewed online the following day.

What subjects are on the Zurich Gymi exam?

German and mathematics, and nothing else. Both papers are written and both are in German. For the Langgymnasium the mark is a quarter language and comprehension, a quarter essay and one half mathematics, so mathematics alone is worth as much as both German components together. For the Kurzgymnasium it is German 50% and mathematics 50%. There is no English paper, no science, no oral and no listening component.

Does my child need to be at a Zurich state school to sit it?

No — any eligible child may sit the exam. What changes is the Vorleistungsnote. A child at a Zurich public school with marks in German and mathematics carries one, it counts for half the final result, and the pass mark is 4.75. In the canton’s own words, in every other case the Vorleistungsnote does not count, which includes private and international schools. Those candidates are marked on the exam alone and pass at 4.5.

What mark does my child need to pass?

4.75 where a Vorleistungsnote counts, because the final figure is the exam result and the school marks averaged half and half. 4.5 where there is no Vorleistungsnote and the exam result stands alone. The lower bar is not a concession — it reflects the fact that nothing else is being averaged in, so a single weak paper cannot be offset.

What percentage of children pass the Gymi exam in Zurich?

In 2026 the canton recorded 15,759 entrance exams sat across all its middle-school routes and 8,060 passed, a rate of 51.1% which it describes as its long-term average. Across the two gymnasium routes specifically the rate was 48.2%. For comparison it was 52.1% in 2024/25 and 50.0% in 2023/24. That figure is the outcome for children who had already decided to sit the exam, so it is not a probability to apply to any individual child.

Is the Swiss Gymnasium hard to get into?

About half the entrance exams sat in Zurich in 2026 were passed, so it is selective without being exceptional. The more useful point is that Zurich sets a threshold mark rather than a number of places, and it operates free school choice for its middle schools, so a candidate is measured against a pass mark and not against the other children in the hall. Passing also admits a child provisionally: there is a probationary semester afterwards.

What is the Probezeit and what happens if my child does not pass it?

The Probezeit is a probationary period of one semester at the start of the gymnasium, in which a pupil confirms the performance the entrance exam indicated. A pupil who does not pass it leaves the school. The canton states that the majority of gymnasium pupils pass it and that the proportion is stable at a high level; it does not publish a current headline percentage in the text of its Probezeit statistics page, so we do not quote one.

Is there a Gymi exam in Zug?

No. Admission in Zug is prüfungsfrei — there is no entrance exam at all, and preparation courses sold for a Zug Gymi are selling something the canton does not run. Basel-Stadt runs only a voluntary exam, for pupils who miss the grade threshold. The central entrance exam described in this article is a Zurich institution.

Where do we start if the exam is in six months?

Tell us your child’s school year, which school they are at now, and how confident their written German is — that is enough to say whether this is a format problem, a language problem or a mathematics problem, and we will say if it is none of them. Gymi and ZAP preparation is CHF 95 an hour from age 11 and CHF 85 for a child of 10 or under, all-in, per 60 full minutes.

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Where to go next

If the exam is the decision, these are the pages behind it

Preparation for this exam, the other exams sat in Switzerland, and the subjects the Gymi actually tests.

Preparing for this exam

One-to-one Gymi and ZAP preparation, in English or in German, at home in Zurich or online.

Gymi and ZAP preparationPrivate tutors in ZurichGymivorbereitung, auf Deutsch

The two subjects examined

Mathematics is half the Langgymnasium mark; the German paper is composition and comprehension.

Maths tutors in ZurichGerman tutorsSee all package prices

The other routes and exams

If the Gymi is one of several options you are weighing, or your family has just arrived.

Exam preparation in SwitzerlandSchool entrance examinationsMoving to Switzerland with school-age children

Start here

Tell us which school your child is at, not just which exam they are sitting

School year, current school, and how confident their written German is. That is usually enough for us to tell you whether the Vorleistungsnote counts for your family, whether this is a format problem or a language problem, and whether six months is comfortable or tight. Where a tutor is the right answer we come back with someone who has prepared candidates for this exam, typically within 48 to 72 hours. There is no enrolment fee, and no fee of any kind to enquire or to be assigned.

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