A weak Multicheck: retake it, or leave it?

The certificate has arrived and the numbers are lower than hoped. The first question is almost always whether it can be redone. The answer is simple and comes further down. The harder question is whether redoing it achieves anything, and what will then be printed on the sheet that reaches the training company.

That second question is rarely answered honestly, because most pages on the subject are written by providers who sell preparation courses. Kognita does not sell courses. The rules below are the test provider’s own official answers, looked up on 13 September 2026.

If you are new to the Swiss system, start here

The Multicheck is a commercial aptitude test run by gateway.one, booked and paid for by the family and taken at one of over 35 test centres. Most candidates sit it in the 8. Klasse, the second-to-last year of compulsory lower secondary school (Sekundarstufe I), at roughly age 14, because that is the year in which applications for an apprenticeship are written.

That timing is the reason the retake question is stressful. A Lehre in Switzerland is not a fallback for pupils who could not manage a Gymnasium, the academic upper secondary school. It is the route most school leavers take: a three- or four-year apprenticeship leading to the EFZ, or a two-year one leading to the EBA, combining paid work in a Lehrbetrieb, the company that trains the apprentice, with school. It leads on to the Berufsmaturität and from there to the universities of applied sciences. Applications for a place therefore compete in the same way job applications compete, roughly a year before the apprenticeship starts.

A note for families who have just moved here: education in Switzerland is a cantonal matter, with 26 cantons and no national school system. The Multicheck is an exception, because it is a private product that works the same in every canton. Whether your child also sits Stellwerk, the assessment run through the school itself, depends entirely on where you live.

The rule in one sentence

The Multicheck aptitude analyses can be taken by one person twice per occupational field within a test period. The test period runs from the end of May to the end of May the following year. Two runs means one first attempt and one repeat.

There is no minimum waiting time. The test could be retaken at the next free slot. The fee falls due again in full, because a complete new run and evaluation take place. Depending on the version that is CHF 60 for Attest, CHF 85 for Detailhandel und Service, or CHF 100 for the other six versions.

That answers the question of whether you may. What is printed on the certificate afterwards is more interesting.

The rule applies per occupational field, not per person. Somebody who has sat the Wirtschaft und Administration analysis twice has used up their allowance in that field, while still having both attempts untouched in another.

What is printed on the second certificate

This is the point most guides leave out. The report for the second run carries a note of the overall result of the first run. Not merely the fact that there was a first attempt, but its overall result.

A training company receiving that certificate therefore sees both numbers next to each other. It also sees whether anything moved between the two dates. That can work in either direction.

Equally important: tests that are broken off count as a run. Unanswered tasks are scored zero and the certificate is issued as normal. Anyone who gives up in the middle has used their first attempt and carries its result into the note on the second one. If something goes wrong during a run, it belongs with the test supervisor on site, not in a quiet exit.

The one documented exception

There is a route without the note, and it is narrow. The provider names two conditions, both of which must be met: the two runs must fall in different test periods, and there must be at least three months between them.

The provider gives its own example: somebody sitting the test in April of one test period and again in the following June does change test period, but stays under three months. The note appears.

Why that route is often closed in practice

For applications to start an apprenticeship in August, training companies usually ask for a certificate from the Multicheck version that has been running since the test period opened in the middle of May of the previous year. A certificate from an older test period is therefore often not what is being asked for in the current application round.

So somebody who gets a weak result in the autumn and waits until after the next end of May in order to avoid the note is in effect postponing their application by a year. For most people that is not a real option. In practice: anyone retaking within the current application year retakes with the note. That calculation belongs before the booking, not after it.

The arithmetic looks different if you sat the test early and the real application round is still ahead of you. Then there is enough time to meet both conditions: different test periods and at least three months apart.

When a retake pays off

The decisive question is not whether the note appears, but whether the second value will come out noticeably different. The test runs 1.5 to 3.5 hours depending on the occupational field and covers several task areas. According to the provider, that breadth means a single weak moment affects the overall result less than it would in a short exam.

The provider points to a two-year research project with Prof. Dr. Martin Kersting of the University of Giessen, which found only a weak relationship between the Multicheck result and how anxious candidates were about tests. That is an argument against the widespread assumption that one nervous day explains the whole result.

Three questions before you book again

Before booking a date, half an hour with the certificate on the table is worth having. It rarely makes the decision harder and often makes it cheaper.

First: what exactly was weak. One low area score in an otherwise coherent picture means something different from a uniformly low profile. Area scores are percentile ranks against the norm sample, while the overall fit is additionally weighted by the requirements profile of the occupation. A low value in an area that barely counts for your chosen occupation pushes the overall fit down only slightly.

Second: is the occupational field the right one. The Multicheck measures against the demands of a particular occupational group. Anyone who has been talked into a field that does not suit them will otherwise repeat the same mistake a second time.

Third: what does the company you want actually say. A phone call or an email to the person who awards the apprenticeship places in that company costs nothing. Some companies state their expectation openly, others weight the certificate lightly anyway. That single answer often replaces the whole deliberation.

What a second attempt costs

The fee falls due in full the second time, because a complete new run and evaluation take place. Across both dates that comes to:

For comparison, and this surprises most families: Stellwerk, the adaptive assessment that schools in some cantons run in class 8 and 9, costs CHF 10.00 per pupil, and the school books it rather than the family. The two tests are often mentioned in the same conversation, but only one of them lands on the family’s bill.

Something many families do not know about the Multicheck itself: a lot of training companies cover the cost and issue a voucher for it. Ask directly at the company you are applying to. Some municipalities and cantons also support aptitude testing financially; your local authority and the careers guidance service will tell you. Whether a voucher also covers a retake is the company’s decision.

Cancellation is free up to 72 hours before the appointment. After that 50 per cent is charged, and later the full amount. Anyone who falls ill is therefore better off cancelling early than turning up and using an attempt.

What a weak result means, and what it does not

The provider puts it plainly itself: if results turn out lower than desired, this is not automatically a reason for a rejected application. The decision on admission always rests with the hiring training company. The same holds in reverse, and a good result is no guarantee.

The Multicheck is one component of an application, not the deciding factor. The provider explicitly advises training companies not to use the test as their only selection criterion, but to look at it together with a Schnupperlehre, the short taster placement in the company, a structured interview and the school reports. A strong week of taster work and a convincing conversation weigh more with many companies than a few percentile ranks.

What a low result is also not: a statement about you as a person or about your future. It is the performance of one morning, measured against the demands of one particular occupational profile.

The route almost nobody thinks of

The count of runs works per occupational field. There are eight versions, from Attest through Detailhandel und Service, Gesundheit und Soziales, ICT, Media und Design, Pharma und Chemie, TEK to Wirtschaft und Administration. A first run in a different occupational field is therefore its own first attempt.

That is not a way around the note, it is a different decision: you are then applying in a different field. The step only makes sense if the occupations in that field genuinely interest you. Anyone unsure which field suits them should talk to the cantonal Berufsberatung, the public careers guidance service, which advises free of charge, before the next booking. Clarify your specific case with the provider before you book.

For context: the Multicheck has no alignment of its evaluation to different school levels. Changing occupational field therefore does not change the yardstick, only which requirements are used for the comparison.

Prepare rather than repeat

The clearest statement on the subject comes from the test provider itself: it advises against preparation courses, on the grounds that they are not run by the provider and often cost a lot of money. What it recommends instead is revising the school material of the eighth school year and using the free preparation tool, which for every task area contains the real instructions, the real sample tasks and some realistic practice tasks.

Note what the provider does not claim. It does not say the tool improves your result. It says it makes the procedure more familiar. That is a narrower promise than a paid course would make, and it comes from the only party that can see the data.

If you want to know how the typical task types are built, the logic behind the figural series is set out in understanding matrix reasoning. How to read a Multicheck certificate line by line is explained in reading a Multicheck result. And anyone who wants to try out at no cost what a timed test situation feels like can take the free test. It replaces neither an assessment by a qualified professional nor the Multicheck, but it takes some of the strangeness out of the situation.