Going to university at 17?

[Bonsoir]

Does anyone have any useful information about applying to university aged 16, for entry at age 17? In particular, do many/any universities refuse candidates under the age of 18 on entry?

I think he's a lot more likely to go to Math Sup (first year of prépa)! But that really won't do him any harm either. He's already very well travelled.

this might be an opition for a gap year?
www.yini.org.uk/

Kind of you to suggest gap year solutions, but in fact it's a non-starter for French students - if they leave the education system it's really hard to return to it.

He could apply early for a deferred place, then a gap year would be a safer option (ie: knowing he didn't have to go back into the French system).

Sure, but given that you don't hear about offers until December at the earliest and April at latest, he'd still have to do at least half a year of prépa and there would be no point giving up half way through.

No, I mean apply in the year before he does prépa (which I assume is what he'd do age 17-18?), so apply from whereever he is (school?) at 16, but for entry at 18 rather than 17. Then he'd hear around xmas about 20 months before he started, and have a second chance of applying again the following year (from prépa) if the result wasn't positive.

I don't really understand the French system too well, so maybe I'm missing something?

OK I see.

There are all sorts of reasons why leaving the education system is really difficult so the gap year concept in an English sense is a risky proposition!

Go on, I'll bite.
What reasons?
He'd be leaving the French education system anyway, if he's planning on studying in England, wouldn't he? I'm intrigued as to what the dire consequences would be if he took a gap year before doing so.

(a) because gap years/incomplete years look crap on French CVs (employers hate them)
(b) because the minute you leave the French education system mid year / miss a year you go to the bottom of the pile if you try to return
(c) because you will have to find a way to pay for your social security contributions on your own

So nothing a year on a placement in industry wouldn't fix then?

(a) There'd be no gap on the cv,
(b) He'd have a guaranteed place at elite UK university to go into, so no cause to have to get back into French system.
(c) presumably if it's a paid placement SS contributions would be paid automatically?

Industrial placements are very highly valued for Engineering at UK universities btw. Cambridge insists on some at some point before or during their degree for example.

(a) yes, there would be an incomplete year on his CV
(b) if he wanted to return to the French system (and this is more than probable) after his UK degree, the incompleted year would count against him
(c) industrial placements are only covered by SS if the placement is part of an educational course

So, no, your conclusions are wrong!

Why would it be incomplete? I have missed a chapter, as we don't say in English.

It seems to me French employers are not entirely consistent. They constantly gripe about how little contact graduates have with the workplace, with devastating consequences in the form of the new réforme licence, yet apparently turn their noses up at anyone that has not spent their entire life in an educational establishment.

If you bail out of prépa in the middle of the first year, that is an incomplete academic year. I can tell you that it looks horrible to have done so and if you ever return to French academia it will be held against you.

Industrial placements feature heavily on the menu of all grandes écoles and those placements are fully covered by SS and integrated into the course structure.

Why would he do prépa at all? Just finish school and instead of going straight to English university at 17 do a full year in industry and go at 18.

SS would be the same as for anyone going into employment surely? Or he could do his year in industry in the UK too perhaps?

Because finding an industrial placement for a minor outside any kind of educational structure is going to be very easy, right?

Do you mean he'd start prépa and then, if accepted to Oxbridge, drop out and do nothing until the next September? I can indeed see why that might go down like a lead balloon. Asking for a deferred place would be preferable.

And of course, if he is going to a grande école with placements laid on, there's no point in getting work experience that might be viewed with condescension later.

The sheer, self-perpetuating injustice of the current French education system always strikes me with increased force after exchanges with you, Bonsoir.

Yes, in France there is first rate higher education and fifth rate higher education and nothing in between.

Christ's College Cambridge seem to say that the Cambridge University Engineering Department will help find placements if you get an offer. In which case you could probably fudge the CV so it looked like part of the academic course. Agree otherwise it does rather rely on you having the right useful contacts or a fair bit of legwork to find something suitable.

They say:
Deferred entry applications for Engineering are encouraged by the College. A gap year can offer a valuable opportunity to travel and/or gain work experience in an industrial setting, which can be a major advantage during the undergraduate course. Information about a gap year placement or sponsorship is provided by CUED, which also has a full-time Industrial Placement Co-ordinator who is ready to help if the College makes you an offer.

I do agree with AuldAlliance that the French system sounds bizarely inflexible though and something of a nightmare.

The one thing you really don't want to do in the French education system is to try to get creative. You need to play by the rules or you quickly get excluded from the game (forever). This is quite a hard thing to grasp if you are used to the British education system!

What really gets to me is that the first-rate education is more and more inaccessible except to those with the financial means to avoid/cherry-pick state provision (which twenty/twenty-five years ago offered a pretty damn good education to almost all pupils). Those same people also have the inside knowledge of arcane codes and norms, which are not necessarily logical, whereby that access remains assured. It's an ever more exclusive club, and the consequences can only be negative for the country as a whole.

Meanwhile, the fifth-rate education is being whole-heartedly dismantled and deliberately undermined by a political elite that (Sarkozy excepted) never went to state school or university and wouldn't dream of sending its kids there, so couldn't give a stuff about it. Except for the shame of poor Shanghai ratings, of course, but they are easy enough to blame on lazy fonctionnaires, as Sarkozy has so eloquently done in the past.

When gaining work experience is being excessively creative and is likely to endanger your chances of being accepted into the club, something is deeply, deeply wrong.

AA - Not being French myself, I find the rules that govern French education excessively restrictive, unnecessary and surprising. But my experience is that French people generally take them for granted, having been brought up with them, and so don't come unstuck as foreigners do.

That is not, however, a defense on my part of their arcane and cumbersome education system which, as you quite rightly point out, is unravelling rapidly in the totally-state sector. I don't think French school teachers work hard and their lack of productivity is a real issue, but I wouldn't work hard either if I was in a job with zero prospects!