page_title: Grande école
section_title: Preparatory classes for grandes écoles (CPGE)
hierarchical_section_title: Grande école / Means of admission to grandes écoles / Preparatory classes for grandes écoles (CPGE)
context_page_description: A grande école is a French institution of higher education that is separate from, but parallel and often connected to, the main framework of the French public university system. Some grandes écoles are elite education institutes with highly competitive admission requirements, some of whose graduates populate the upper levels of the private and public sectors of French society.
  Grandes écoles chiefly admit students based on their national ranking in competitive written and oral exams. While open for anyone to register, candidates for the national exams have almost always completed two or three years of dedicated preparatory classes for admission. Some also admit select graduates of associate or bachelor's degree programs, of 2-year technical curriculums, and even of candidates already working, and international students through exchange programs.
  Grandes écoles differ from public universities in France: indeed, universities in France are comprehensive institutions composed of several faculties covering various fields with a large student body. On the other hand, grandes écoles are much smaller in size and recruit their students with more selective processes.
context_section_description: Classes préparatoires aux Grandes Écoles (CPGE), or prépas (preparatory classes for grandes écoles), are two-year classes, in either sciences, literature, or economics. These are the traditional way in which most students prepare to pass the competitive recruitment examination of the main grandes écoles. Most are held in state lycées (high schools); a few are private. Admission is competitive and based on the students' lycée grades. Preparatory classes with the highest success rates in the entrance examinations of the top grandes écoles are highly selective. Students who are not admitted to the grande école of their choice often repeat the second year of preparatory classes and attempt the exam again the following year.
  There are five categories of prépas:
  Scientifiques:  These prepare for the engineering schools and teach mathematics, physics, chemistry, and technology. They are broken down in sub-categories according to the emphasis of their dominant subject: they are mainly focused on mathematics and either physics (MP), industrial sciences and technologies (TSI), physics and chemistry (PC), physics and engineering science (PSI), physics and technology (PT) and chemistry, physics and technology (TPC) .
  BCPST: biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and mathematics. Commonly called "Agro-Véto", these classes prepare students primarily for agricultural and veterinary schools, but also for schools in geology, hydrology, and forestry, as well as for research and teaching careers via the Écoles normales supérieures.
  Lettres: humanities, essentially for the Écoles normales supérieures (students can also compete to enter business schools, but represent a small minority of those admitted). There are two main sub-categories: "Lettres", in either "A/L" (with Ancient Greek and/or Latin) or LSH (with geography), and B/L (with mathematics and social sciences).
  Économique et commerciale: mathematics and economics. These prepare for the entrance exams to the French business schools, and are subdivided between science (mathematics) and economics tracks - a third track also exists for students with a "technological", i.e. applied background.
  Chartes: humanities, with an emphasis on philology, history and languages, named after the school École Nationale des Chartes. By far the smallest prépa in number of students.
caption: The Lycée Louis-le-Grand, in Paris, is one of the most famous lycées providing preparatory classes for grandes écoles. (It is on the right side of the rue Saint-Jacques; on the left is the Sorbonne.)
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