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by tasogare 2031 days ago
> In 2018, I graduated from EPITA, a french engineering “Grande École”

Epita is not a "grande école". This term is used for public engineering schools such as Polytechnique (X), Centrale, les Mines, etc. which have very very selective entrance exams. EPITA is a private school, which is commonly seen as "pay your diploma" for people who can’t compete in the traditional elite engineering circuit.
3 comments
ganafagol 2031 days ago
I've personally worked with a bunch of EPITA graduates in the past and they are some of the best young software engineers I've ever met.
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rubenfiszel 2031 days ago
It might be a great school and who cares if someone went through a "grande école" but why would an article preface itself with a statement so obviously false.
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alisonkisk 2031 days ago
Maybe because the author is the sort of person who calls himself a lonely genius.
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guillaumei 2031 days ago
EPITA is not part of the French elite school system. It couldn't even deliver an engineering degree until 2010, and considering the curriculum, I am surprised it could, but I guess it is all part of degree inflation that we see everywhere.
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Ninroot 2031 days ago
That's an interesting point. I haven't found consistent source about it. I relied on the English page of Wikipedia. If you have a solid source that would invalidate, please sent it to me and I will ba happy to update the article. In the meantime, I will keep that blurry definition https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/JORFTEXT000000359000/...
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dudul 2031 days ago
Why go with the English version instead of the French one?

https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_%C3%A9cole#Corps_civi...

EPITA is not a "grande ecole". Doesn't mean it's not a good school.

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yodsanklai 2031 days ago
EPITA seems to be a "Grande École" according to wikipedia [1].

It's obviously not as selective as Polytechnique and their curriculum is more applied and less theoretical than other "traditional" schools, but maybe it's for the best.

I've consistently heard good things about people who graduated from that school. Actually, in my company, one of the most productive engineer is an EPITA graduate, and we do have a lot of employees coming from much more elitist schools (including ENS and X).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande_école

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