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Explaining the French Grandes Ecoles | 94 comments (94 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Explaining the French Grandes Ecoles (none / 0)
Hey, are all our French regular contributors élite? I mean, by definition, Grande École alumni?

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Mar 27th, 2006 at 03:23:19 AM EST
Re: Explaining the French Grandes Ecoles (none / 0)
No, we're just global citizens...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Mon Mar 27th, 2006 at 03:25:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Explaining the French Grandes Ecoles (4.00 / 2)
Eeek! A Blairite!

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Mar 27th, 2006 at 03:27:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Explaining the French Grandes Ecoles (none / 1)
Honest, I wanted to ask too... I would say,maybe 90%?

I went to a "grande école" myself. Not the "crème de la crème" like Jérôme, but a grande école anyway...

An interesting point is what what you call "elite": any "grande Ecole", or just the top seeds.
In the first case, it amounts to about 25.000 people every year in 1980, maybe 40-50.000 now.
In the second case, 400 then and 800 now.

I hope you realise  you interact with the french elite?  <snark>

An explanation why you just find "grandes écoles" here, if you agree that this blog is mostly visited by people with higher education profile, is the language: the remaining french professionals (medicine, law) dont speak so much english, as they don't study it and don't need to.

And as I always explain to foreigners: if you exclude vocation and family tradition which at age 18 are rare, doctors and lawyer in France are 2nd tier students. In my baccalaureat class ( "C section", scientific major but we had the best students in french literature too), the first 1/4 without exception went for a "classe préparatoire" for an engineering school. Then, a "classe préparatoire" for business school. The others, who were not accepted, has to take medicine, law, economy at the university.

The selection - based on mathematic- is completely rigged and socially internalized toward engineering grande écoles, followed by Business school.

La répartie est dans l'escalier. Elle revient de suite.

by lacordaire on Mon Mar 27th, 2006 at 06:03:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Explaining the French Grandes Ecoles | 94 comments (94 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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