ETH Zurich Study Planner: The Swiss Semester System

🇨🇭 The First-Year Wall

ETH's Grundlagenprüfung exists because most universities' first-year exams are gentle. Here, a large fraction of a cohort's fate is decided by a block of exams with limited attempts - and the students who survive are the ones whose weekly routines were genuinely weekly.

PlanBot holds that routine together with daily AI regeneration - free on Android, 3 AI plans a day, in English.

The ETH/Swiss Semester Shape

Phase	Weeks	Planning Focus
Semester start	1-4	Exercise series begin immediately - blocks for Uebungen from day one
Mid-semester	5-10	Deep blocks by ECTS × weakness; first past-exam walkthroughs
Semester end	11-14	Timed past exams from the Prüfungsarchiv
Prüfungssession	Session weeks	Timed attempts + taper (no new content)

Two structural notes:

1. Exams are concentrated in session weeks after teaching ends - that gap is your ramp, not your holiday
2. The Prüfungsarchiv is sacred. ETH publishes past exams with solutions; volume of genuine timed attempts is the single highest-yield activity

Weighting a 30-ECTS Semester

Split blocks by ECTS × weakness, not evenly:

• A 10-ECTS analysis course you're failing: ~40% of deep blocks
• Two solid 5-ECTS courses: ~10% each (maintenance)
• The rest split proportionally

Re-weight after every first midterm or Testat result. The Exam Revision Calculator spaces your cycles; the Daily Schedule Generator builds weekday blocks around your actual timetable (Vorstudium students: include your Stocherkahn mornings).

The Problem-Solving Discipline

ETH exams are problem marathons. Inside every deep block:

1. 10 min: refresh the relevant theorem/toolbox
2. 50 min: closed-book problems from exercises or past exams
3. 15 min: mark strictly, log the step where you failed (not just the answer)

Reading notes feels productive; solving under time pressure is what passes Grundlagenprüfungen.

When the Week Breaks (It Will)

Between exercise deadlines, Testate, family visits, and Swiss rail delays, your week gets punched. Survival rules:

1. Missed blocks roll forward automatically - no "start again Monday"
2. After every Testat/Klausur, re-weight
3. One protected evening weekly; burnout is a planning failure

That's exactly the loop PlanBot automates daily, with streaks/XP keeping consistency alive. Drafting with ChatGPT first? Our tested prompt workflow covers the plan shape; the app covers the memory problem.

Managing the Testat and Exercise Layer

ETH (and EPFL) grade the path as well as the destination: Testate and exercise-series completion gate exam admission in many courses. The planner error to avoid is treating these small deliverables as overflow work. Put them in as real blocks with real deadlines - an AI planner, when fed them alongside Klausur dates, sequences the semester so the small walls are cleared weeks before the big one. The students who stumble are always the ones whose exercise series accumulated quietly.

A Note On The Session Gap

Swiss exam sessions sit weeks after lectures end - first-year students treat that gap as vacation and re-learn everything under pressure. The system answer is a written plan for the Prüfungsarchiv weeks before the semester ends: past exams as your primary material, timed attempts in the final fortnight, error autopsies logged by topic. You already own the routine; the same daily regeneration loop that protected your lecture weeks will carry you through the session.

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ETH, EPFL, UZH, Unibe, or any Swiss exam-heavy program - same physics. Download PlanBot free on Android.