Edit] Grandes écoles & CPGE

Main article: Classe Préparatoire aux Grandes Écoles

The Grandes écoles of France are higher education establishments. They are generally focused on a single subject area, such as engineering or business, have a moderate size, and are often quite selective in their admission of students. They are widely regarded as prestigious,^[2][3] and traditionally have produced most of France's scientists and executives.

The classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles (CPGE), widely known as prépas, is a prep course with the main goal of training students for enrollment in a Grande École. Admission to the CPGE is usually based on performance during the last two years of high school, called Première and Terminale. The CPGE programs are 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 CPGE. Each CPGE receives the files of hundreds of applicants worldwide^{[citation needed]} every year during April and May, and selects its new students under its own criteria. A few CPGE programmes, mainly the private CPGEs (which account for 10% of CPGEs), also have an interview process or look at a student's involvement in the community.

The oldest CPGEs are the scientific ones, which can only be accessed by scientific Bacheliers. Scientific CPGE are called MPSI ("Mathematics, Physics and Engineering Science"), PCSI ("Physics, Chemistry, and Engineering Science") or PTSI ("Physics, Technology, and Engineering Science") in the first year, MP ("Mathematics and Physics"), PSI ("Physics and Engineering Science"), PC ("Physics and Chemistry") or PT ("Physics and Technology") in the second year and BCPST ("Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Life and Earth Sciences").

First year CPGE students are called the 'Math Sup' - or Hypotaupe - (Sup for "Classe de Mathématiques Supérieures", superior in French, meaning post-high school), and second years 'Math Spé' - or Taupe - (Spés standing for "Classe de Mathématiques Spéciales", special in French). The students of these classes are called Taupins. Both the first and second year programmes include as much as sixteen hours of mathematics teaching per week, ten hours of physics, two hours of philosophy, two to four hours of (one or two) foreign languages teaching and two to three hours of minor options: either SI, Engineering Industrial Science or Theoretical Computer Science (including some programming using the Pascal or CaML programming languages, as a practical work). With this is added several hours of homework, which can rise as much as the official hours of class. A known joke among those students is that they are becoming monks for two years. Sometimes three.

The literary and humanities CPGEs have also their own nicknames, Hypokhâgne for the first year and Khâgne for the second year. The students are called the khâgneux. These classes prepare for schools such as the three Écoles Normales Supérieures, the Ecole des Chartes, and sometimes Sciences Po.

There are two kinds of Khâgnes. The Khâgne de Lettres is the most common, and focuses on philosophy, French literature, history and languages. The Khâgne de Lettres et Sciences Sociales (Literature and Social Sciences), otherwise called Khâgne B/L, also includes mathematics and socio-economic sciences in addition to those literary subjects.

There are also CPGE which are focused on economics (who prepare the admission in business schools). These later are known as "Prépa EC" and are split in two parts ("prépa EC spe mathematics" , generally for those who graduated the baccalaureat S and "prépa EC spe éco" , for those who were in the economics section in the lycée.). The most famous of those business schools are HEC Paris, ESSEC Business School and ESCP Europe which propose a Master degree and an MBA.

The students of CPGE are also matriculated in universities, and can rejoin college in case of failure of their grandes écoles ambitions or if they just do not wish to become engineers and feel not able to pass the Écoles Normales Supérieures competitive examinations. The ratio of students who failed to enter grandes écoles is low in the scientifics and economics CPGE, but high in humanities, for the only Grandes Écoles aimed at in these classes are the Écoles Normales Supérieures.

The amount of work required of the students is exceptionally high. In addition to class time and homework, students spend several hours each week completing exams and 'colles' (very often written 'khôlles' to look like a Greek word, this way of writing being initially a khâgneux joke). The so called 'colles' are unique to French academic education in CPGEs. They consist of oral examinations twice a week, in maths, physics, French and the foreign languages, usually English, German or Spanish. Students, usually in groups of three, spend an hour facing a professor alone in a room, answering questions and solving problems. In CPGE littéraires (humanities), the system of 'colles' is different; they are taken every quarter in every subject. Students have one hour to prepare a short presentation that takes the form of a French-style dissertation (a methodologically codified essay, typically structured in 3 parts: thesis, counter-thesis, and synthesis) in history, philosophy, etc. on a given topic, and that of a commentaire composé (a methodologically codified commentary) in literature and foreign languages; as for the Ancient Greek or Latin, they involve a translation and a commentary. The student then has 20 minutes to present his work to the teacher, who ends the session by asking some questions on the presentation and on the corresponding topic. 'Colles' are regarded as extremely stressful, particularly due to the high standards expected by the teachers, and the subsequent harshness that may be directed at students who do not perform adequately, but they are important in as much as they prepare the students, from the very first year, to the oral part of the competitive examination, reserved to the happy few who successfully pass the written part.