History Governance School year Primary school Middle school and high school

Grandes écoles
The grandes écoles of France are elite higher-education establishments. They are generally focused on a single subject area (e.g., engineering or business), have a small size (typically between 100 and 300 graduates per year), and are highly selective. They are widely regarded as prestigious, and most of France's scientists and executives have graduated from a grande école.
National rankings are published every year by various magazines. While the rankings slightly vary from year to year, the top grandes écoles have been very stable for decades:

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  science and engineering: Écoles Normales Supérieures, Ecole Polytechnique, Mines ParisTech, ISAE-Supaéro, Ponts Paristech and CentraleSupélec;
  
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  humanities: three Écoles Normales Supérieures and Ecole des Chartes;
  
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  business: HEC Paris, ESSEC Business School, ESCP Europe, INSEAD, EMLyon, Audencia and EDHEC;^[22][23][24]
  
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  administration and political sciences: ENA and Sciences Po.
  

Preparatory classes (CPGEs)
The Preparatory classes (in French "classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles" or CPGE), widely known as prépas, is a prep course with the main goal of training students for enrollment in a grande école. Admission to CPGEs is based on performance during the last two years of high school, called Première and Terminale. Only 5% of a generation is admitted to a prépa. CPGEs are usually located within high schools but pertain to tertiary education, which means that each student must have successfully passed their Baccalauréat (or equivalent) to be admitted in a CPGE. Each CPGE receives applications from hundreds of applicants worldwide year in April and May, and selects students based on its own criteria. A few CPGEs, mainly the private ones, which account for 10% of CPGEs, also have an interview process or look at a student's involvement in the community.
The ratio of CPGE students who fail to enter any grande école is lower in scientific and business CPGEs than in humanities CPGEs.