Marrakech – Moroccan preparatory schools swept the top positions in Le Figaro’s first-ever ranking of foreign classes préparatoires (CPGE) feeding France’s grandes écoles, published Wednesday. The rankings cover scientific, ECG, and ECT tracks and draw on École Polytechnique admission data over three years.
Morocco’s Lydex (LM6E), located in Benguerir, leads the scientific ranking by a wide margin. Over the past three years, 17.7% of its students gained admission to the École Polytechnique – France’s most prestigious engineering school. In 2025 alone, 17 Lydex students were admitted, following 16 in 2024 and 20 in 2023. The school offers both the MP and PT tracks.
Second place goes to Lymed in Tetouan, with an average integration rate of 8.8% over the same period, recording 2, 3, and 4 admissions across 2025, 2024, and 2023, respectively. Rabat’s Lycée Al Zahrawi holds third place at 7%, with 2 admissions in both 2025 and 2024, and one in 2023.
Tunisia’s IPEST in Tunis is the only non-Moroccan school in the top four, with a 4.7% rate across MP, PC, and PSI tracks – 1 admission in 2025, 4 in 2024, and 5 in 2023. Morocco’s Lycée Moulay Driss in Fès ranks fifth at 3.3%.
The remaining top-ten spots belong almost entirely to Moroccan institutions, including Esprit Prépa in Tunis at sixth with 2.1%, followed by Lycée Ibn Timiya in Marrakech, Lycée Mohamed V and Lycée d’Excellence Mohammed VI in Casablanca, and Ibn Ghazi in Rabat.
The ranking methodology focuses exclusively on Polytechnique results. The school reserves a separate admission track for international CPGE candidates – 45 places in 2025, compared to 399 for French students. Candidates sit the same subjects.
To be admitted, they must score at or above the last French student accepted on the complementary list. When too few candidates meet that threshold, the school admits fewer students than its target.
Written exams can be taken in candidates’ home countries under supervision of French military personnel, as Polytechnique is a military institution. Oral exams require travel to France.
Read also: 24 Moroccan Students Secure Spots at France’s Elite École Polytechnique in 2025
Morocco directs roughly 10,000 students annually into its CPGE system, selecting exclusively from top performers across the country.
According to Mohamed El Bourkadi, who coordinates CPGE inspection for Morocco’s Ministry of National Education and was quoted by Le Figaro, the country deliberately keeps enrollment limited to maintain quality.
“We send the cream of the crop,” he told the paper, adding that the goal is to offer students the best possible conditions rather than scale the system. He noted that scientific centres are equipped with strong computing and physics-chemistry lab infrastructure.
Moroccan officials see the investment as nationally beneficial: students who go abroad often return, and those who stay contribute through diaspora networks.
Halima Rahmani, one of the directors at Lycée Al Zahrawi, told Le Figaro the school acts “above all in the interest of the young Moroccan.” Whether a student joins a Moroccan institution or a top French one, she said, is secondary – what matters is that students reach their full potential and achieve their career goals.
Laurent Champaney, director of Arts et Métiers and vice-president of the Conférence des grandes écoles, explained that France itself has a stake in this pipeline. “We currently lack young French people who want to become engineers,” he indicated, “and these candidates help partly fill that need.”
In the business school track, the ECG ranking is led by Casablanca’s Groupe Scolaire La Résidence, which received a perfect score of 20/20 with 19 students admitted to French schools. La Résidence Bouskoura, also in Casablanca, ranks second with a score of 18.4 and 21 students, followed by Rabat’s Lycée Ibn Al Ghazi at 17.1 with 25 students.
The ECT ranking places Casablanca’s ESTEM first with a perfect 20/20 score and 36 students admitted – the largest cohort in either business ranking. La Résidence and La Résidence Bouskoura follow in second and third.
Unlike Polytechnique, French business schools offer no separate track for foreign candidates. International students compete directly against their French counterparts in both written and oral exams.
Lionel Sitz, head of admissions at EM Lyon, pointed out to the French publication that the strongest Moroccan students frequently opt for preparatory schools in France rather than staying in Morocco – a factor that dilutes the concentration of top performers in domestic business-track prépas and keeps those results less striking than the scientific rankings.
