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panchoop t1_itcyhle wrote

Is there any further explanation or just a correlation? I am not aware of any lateral way of getting into these universities (i.e. via favors) and also to finish the careers.

It is well known/observed that children follow the footsteps of their parents.

Also, higher academic achievement of parents (and income) lead to better achieving children.

That said, this correlation information would work as supporting evidence.

Edit. I read the source. It is essentially about these topics, not that it is an "unfair" or "ilegal" access to universities, it is just that, because of the effect the parents have on the children, they fare better.

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Zerdligham t1_itdn5o8 wrote

Actually the way 'Grandes Ecoles' select students leave particularly little room for nepotism.
It's indeed just a prime example of social reproduction.

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Janderhungrige t1_itdcfqf wrote

Also, If your parents attendet a school, htey know their way around. Meaning what the core ideas of that school are and therefore, applications, studyfocus, Präparation, Internships,... are probably much more focused.

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Cookie-Senpai t1_itd7nrk wrote

Yes basically environmental influences sets the children on the course of the parents.

I suspect the effect is amplified by the parents teaching scientific facts and reasoning at a younger age as well as insisting on and supporting the children in learning science.

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ThrowMeAway_DaddyPls t1_itemctk wrote

Also, parents knowing how positive of an impact it has on their long term careers and thus finance, will push twice as hard their children in that direction.

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Garanash t1_itkej70 wrote

What I don't understand is why people aren't mentionning the fact that if your parents went to those schools there is no way they are "common intelligence" so it's no wonder their kids is too. Maybe people don't know that these schools accept students purely on blind results in a heavy contest ?

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r0b0d0c t1_itep6di wrote

I'd agree if the difference was 2X or even 10X, but 330X is outrageous. Plugging some numbers in shows how ridiculous these figures are. The 330X figure doesn't even make sense for a baseline acceptance rate greater than 1/330 = 0.3%, in which case the acceptance rate if your father attended would be 100%. More reasonable numbers would be 0.15% vs 50% or 0.075% vs 25%. Bottom line: either these numbers are wrong by a metric fuck-ton, or someone at ENA is pulling some strings. My guess is the former.

Edit: My Google machine tells me that the admission rate to ENA is 8%, so the 330X figure would be possible if at least 99.98% of admissions were legacy admissions.

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Iridium6626 t1_itfnjd1 wrote

I suppose the 330x is in comparison with a random person in the country, it seems logical that a son of someone that didn’t went to something like the X will be less likely to be interested in longer studies

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glium t1_itiaq35 wrote

The study should just be interpreted as, a random person is extremely unlikely to go to ENA, while for the children of alumni it is quite likely

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r0b0d0c t1_itip74r wrote

If that's the case, then these statistics are meaningless. They're comparing apples and pizza.

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Jiisharo t1_itk8km6 wrote

One of the carton reason is that parents who have attended these grande école will tend to push their child to attend one that much more.

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paper_monkey t1_itg4e60 wrote

I graduated from the Italian version of it. The point here is passing the admission test. It is a brutal test but you can prepare for it. It is not something that it is easy to just pass without preparation. When you understand that it is not asking you to use pre made formulas and concepts but instead they ask you to model the system yourself or explain the concept making assumptions based on your knowledge you have much better chance to pass. And by having a parent that knows the type of questions/problems they ask and it is able to teach you how to approach several archetypes is a huge advantage. It has nothing to do with reccomandation, I can assure you. Genetics could also be a factor but proper preparation for the test is the biggest factor for sure. If any person is interested I recommend downloading the test from previous years and understand how to solve them (don’t be afraid to seek help from a professor these problems are made to be difficult and sometimes need to be explained). I recommend going from the most recent to the oldest. The earliest one were either easier (and not representing the current complexity of the test) or based on how the subject was taught at the time (which is often different from the current norm).

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