Help! My husband and I just moved to Zurich from the U.S. and he needs to take an exam from his graduate school next week. He needs to find a proctor willing to administer the exam (as his courses are online). We have tried the library in Zurich as well as ETH with no luck. Called a few other independent testing centers as well with no luck. Anyone have a clue as to what we should do? I feel like this is a basic service that should be offered somewhere, especially in a big city like Zurich, but perhaps we are looking in the wrong places. Has anyone on this forum been in a similar situation?

What is the area of study? Does one of his professors from the US know someone here? What are the requirements for a proctor, e.g., could it be a PhD student or post doc? Are you willing to pay for the service? You might check with the academic department at uni zurich similar to his field of study.

The universities are having exams next week, i think, so it might be a little harder than usual.

Yes, he is willing to pay for a proctor. He is taking an exam for a software engineering course, but it will be a written exam.

These are the possibilities/requirements that the U.S. university has for an proctor:
-A librarian at an academic or public library
-Testing centers at 2 or 4 year colleges and universities
-Faculty member at a local university or community college
-Commercial learning/tutoring centers (i.e. Sylvan Learning Center)
-A military learning center or officer of higher rank, if in the military.

Like I mentioned, we already checked the main library in Zurich, ETH, and called several commercial testing centers. He is not in the military. We might have a lead with Migros Club Schule, so we'll see how that pans out.

Check with these guys too.

Http://www.zhaw.ch

The zurich university of applied sciences. They might help.

Good luck!

bump! anyone know testing centers? thanks!

A little word of caution....

An EF member studying at a Canadian online school asked for a proctor here, and I submitted my girl friend's name, as she is qualified to do so. All went well, and the huge sum of 110 Canadian dollars needed to be paid. The Canadians sent a check.

Correspondence ensued, and the Canadians claimed they couldn't do bank transfers, only checks. After pointing out the costs to process checks here, she eventually received the money by transfer, but only after many e-mails and about 6 months.

In future she will ask for cash, and let the student try and get the fee refunded.

FYI
to give some feedback on the proctor search, the Zurich International School does offer external proctored exams for a fee of 50chf an hour. I think that is just about industry standard, and they take care of the organizational admin process. Hope this helps future test takers!

For future requests, you can simply go to your university website and look for the CLEP department, this is usually the department which administers testing at US universities. There you will usually find international institutions, which can administer the test at a cost. For my university, I would have had to go to Geneva and pay roughly 270 CHF for one exam.