François, Pierre <br/><br/>
Are competitive entrance exams neutral? Competition and sponsorship in access to the École polytechnique 

 -  2018.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 69 
<br/><br/> The social composition of elite schools, characterized by a remarkable over representation of upper class students, is usually explained by the successive “tournaments” that amount in the selection of students, based on both social and scholarly factors, long before they even apply to the elite schools. Through an in-depth analysis of the case of the École polytechnique, this article depicts the entrance exam as a sorting device that increases the inequalities that precede it. The distinction between competition and sponsorship devices further allows to show that it is the combination of these two logics at the very heart of the tests, especially the math tests, that hampers the neutrality of entrance exams.