Many of our students are currently going through the UCAS admissions process and, undoubtedly, becoming intimately familiar with the universities they are applying to. Sometimes, we tend to live in a bubble and only look at British institutions, so I thought it would be nice to provide some insights for an international institution.
École normale supérieure(ENS) is a university located in Paris, France. It is a relatively unknown university from a global viewpoint, I hadn’t heard of it until very recently, but when looking at the statistics, it appears that it has proportionately produced the highest number of Nobel Laureates of any undergraduate institution, more than Oxford, Harvard or Cambridge!
So naturally, this begs the question, why?
What is this university doing differently for it to have consistently churned out such a high percentage of academically exceptional individuals?
Collecting the academically gifted:
1) Competition:
Compared to the most well-known universities of our times, ENS has a very low yearly intake, roughly 200 students. The majority of students wishing to gain entry into the university have to pass the following:
- An admissions test called Concours
- An interview with university faculty
- A French proficiency test
Concours roughly translates to competition, and it is the process that grants applicants admissibility, essentially to progress onto the interview stage. It varies according to which discipline the applicant wishes to study but, in general, it is very hard for every subject. For example, to study Mathematics, applicants are required to sit a 6 hour written exam and rank in the top 140!
Preparatory classes for the Concours exams begin 2-3 years beforehand, which gives a pretty good indication of the breadth and difficulty of content that a student has to learn to enter the university. The couple of months spent preparing for the UCAT and BMAT examinations in the UK are quite taxing, but try extending that timeline to 24 months or more and it paints a very clear picture of the kind of preparation a prospective applicant needs to do.
This rigorous application process ensures that only the most intelligent and conscientious students in the country enter the school, which, of course, sets a good standard for the future prospects of the accepted cohort.
2) Incentive:
The French government spends roughly £6,100 per public university student per year, but up to £12,000 can be spent per ENS student. Whilst the fairness of this expenditure can be questioned, it certainly encourages the best of the best to compete to get into the top institutions in the country.
So why isn’t this university as well-known as Oxford or Cambridge?
Whilst it does produce the highest ratio of Nobel laureates than any other university, the total number of Nobel laureates produced by Oxford is higher simply due to the higher number of students studying there. Furthermore, it is a highly specialised school, only focusing on the sciences and humanities, unlike Oxford which has undergraduate curriculums for almost all fields of study.
A bigger problem with ENS is that it isn't as accessible as other high ranked institutions such as Cambridge or Harvard. This is due to flaws in the French educational structure, which some believe to be rooted in elitism. Only the bright and wealthy are able to gain places in high ranking universities and higher education schools. This problem is amplified by the high relative difference in standard between ENS and all other French universities. As a result, ENS is granted significantly more funding than all other national universities. This has led to the social elite staying at the top of the academic field, with very few opportunities granted to those from less wealthy backgrounds.
Now many of you may be thinking, I am not going to be studying at a French university any time soon, however, I believe it is important to study alternate systems and their structures. They can help us to see flaws within our own system and make improvements for the future. As the saying goes, a lake composed of many streams is deeper than one formed by a single river.
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
Like what you see, sign up to the email newsletter here, to get early and full access to these newsletters. [This email was originally sent out in the mailing list and is one of a selection from our newsletters.]
