Six to Nine Times More Likely to Enter These Elite Schools
The author studied the records of 270,000 students from ten of the most prestigious schools (ENA, ENS Ulm, ESPCI Paris, École polytechnique, École des Ponts et Chaussées, Télécom Paris, Mines Paris, ESSEC, ESCP, and Sciences Po Paris) between 1911 and 2015. To identify students of noble descent, he relied on the particle names in the school registers and on the list of the Association d’entraide de la noblesse française (ANF), which ensures the “authentication of true nobility.”
According to his findings, students of aristocratic origin who entered these elite schools between 1990 and 2015 – born between 1971 and 1995 – had between six and nine times more chances of entering these elite schools, compared to eleven to fifteen times in the early 20th century. In the early 2010s, approximately one in 500 people in the French population was of noble origin, while one in 50 students in these schools was, according to his estimates.
“These results show that, despite the abolition of historical aristocratic privileges, inequalities between noble and commoner families have not disappeared,” emphasizes the study titled “Noble Descent and Inequalities in Access to Elite Schools.” While students of noble descent were historically concentrated at Sciences Po Paris, their presence is now more evenly distributed among the most prestigious institutions, with business schools showing the highest levels of overrepresentation,” according to the study.
Another finding: men of noble descent are more overrepresented than women in these elite schools, although the gap has narrowed.
