To find the best grammar school or high school in the canton of Zurich, you can use the Zurich grammar school ranking, whereby there is not just one grammar school ranking list for Zurich.

In the following article, we present the various rankings of grammar schools and cantonal schools in Zurich and Switzerland so that you can get an idea of the ranking of grammar schools in the canton of Zurich and decide which cantonal school is the best.

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Overview

Why a Gymnasium Zurich ranking makes sense
Several rankings of grammar schools in Zurich

Why a Gymnasium Zurich ranking makes sense

The ranking culture has not stopped at the grammar schools in the canton of Zurich - or indeed the whole of Switzerland. But how useful is a grammar school Zurich ranking?

Since the canton of Zurich has had free choice of grammar school since 2000, it makes perfect sense to compare the grammar schools in the canton of Zurich on the basis of rankings in order to know which is the best grammar school or cantonal school for the respective pupil.

However, there is one exception to the free choice of school, namely if there are not enough places at a grammar school, i.e. more pupils apply for a grammar school than it has capacity for. In the 2022/2023 school year, for example, 280 pupils were unable to attend the grammar school in the canton of Zurich that they had originally selected when applying for the grammar school examination.

After registering for the Gymnasium, you still have to pass the grammar school exam.

Prepare yourself now for the central entrance exam (ZAP) with the help of a grammar school preparation course from Lern-Forum.

Several rankings of grammar schools in Zurich

When we talk about rankings of grammar schools in the canton of Zurich, there is no single ranking. In recent decades, there have been various rankings of Zurich's grammar schools and cantonal schools, each of which had very different objectives, and some of which were not even intended as a ranking of grammar schools in the canton of Zurich.

Secondary school ranking list of the Department of Education of the Canton of Zurich

Every three years since 2000 - i.e. since the free choice of grammar school - the Institute for External School Evaluation at Secondary Level II (formerly IFES, now integrated into ZEM CES) has surveyed former grammar school pupils on their experiences with the respective Zurich grammar school they attended on behalf of the Canton of Zurich's Department of Education.

The results of these so-called Standardised Alumni Surveys (SEB) were partly published in a kind of ranking list, but it was not known exactly which grammar school was rated. It is therefore aranking list with no significance for those looking for the best grammar school in the canton of Zurich. And the alumni surveys are not designed by the cantonal education directorate to create a grammar school ranking list.

ETH ranking list for grammar schools in Switzerland

In 2009, ETH Zurich published a study showing which grammar schools in Switzerland produced the most successful ETH students.

Two grammar schools from the canton of Zurich were in the top three places in this ETH grammar school ranking, namely Rychenberg Cantonal School (Winterthur) in first place and Hohe Promenade Cantonal School (city of Zurich) in third place.

However, the ETH study was also criticised for not allowing reliable conclusions to be drawn from the study results about the quality of the schools at which the students had completed their Matura. This is because the ETH Zurich study only took into account the successes of those students who corresponded with the specific requirements profile of the ETH. For this reason, only 60 out of 160 grammar schools in Switzerland were included in the ranking.

Gymnasium Zurich ranking of the Federal Statistical Office

Another ranking of Zurich's grammar schools is based on data from the Swiss Federal Statistical Office from 2019 on the student success rate in the canton of Zurich. The Department of Education of the Canton of Zurich has used this data to compile a Zurich grammar school ranking in terms of drop-out rates. The corresponding data and a ranking chart were published by the cantonal education directorate in 2020 in the publication "Success in studies; Which factors influence the study progress of Zurich Matura students".

The data from the Federal Statistical Office shows that the highest graduation rate in the canton of Zurich, 85 per cent, was achieved by students at the Rychenberg grammar school (Winterthur), while the lowest graduation rate, 63 per cent, was achieved by students at the cantonal Matura school for adults and the Rämibühl mathematics and science grammar school (MNG).

As mentioned at the beginning, the publication of the Canton of Zurich also contains a dropout ranking list, which results in the following Gymnasium Zurich ranking, with the Gymnasium or cantonal school with the most dropouts in first place and the cantonal school or Gymnasium with the fewest dropouts in 21st place:

According to this ranking, the best grammar school in Zurich (canton) is therefore the Rychenberg cantonal school in Winterthur.

And by the way: A private grammar school may also be an alternative to a public grammar school for pupils in the canton of Zurich, especially if the pupil in question has not passed the Zurich grammar school examination. You can find out more about this topic in the following Lern-Forum article: "Private schools in Switzerland: Is there really a private school boom?"

School ranking of the Science Olympiad: best cantonal school in Switzerland

Another ranking list of grammar schools in Switzerland is produced as part of the annual Science Olympiad. High school students from all over Switzerland compete in the following 11 subjects: Astronomy, biology, chemistry, geography, computer science, linguistics, maths, philosophy, physics, robotics and economics.

In 2022/2023, the school ranking of the Science Olympiad among the top 10 Swiss grammar schools and cantonal schools was as follows: