École Polytechnique

Ecole Polytechnique is a French grande ecole in Palaiseau, on the Saclay plateau south of Paris. Founded in 1794 during the Revolution, it long occupied premises in central Paris before moving to Palaiseau in 1976. It remains a scientific and engineering school under the Ministry of the Armed Forces, and since 2019 it has been a founding member of Institut Polytechnique de Paris. Its defining structure is the Ingenieur Polytechnicien program alongside bachelor's, master's and doctoral study.

Departments cover mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, mechanics, computer science, economics and the humanities. Graduate researchers work in campus laboratories such as CMAP in applied mathematics, the Leprince-Ringuet laboratory in particle physics and labs in optics, hydrodynamics and econometrics. The school is known for mathematics, physics, engineering science and economics. Shared doctoral training runs through Institut Polytechnique de Paris and the surrounding Saclay research cluster.

The student body is small, on the order of 3,000, with the polytechnicien cohort still largely French and master's and PhD cohorts more international. Faculty and research staff number in the hundreds. Alumni include mathematician Henri Poincare, industrialist Andre Citroen, former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing and physicist Henri Becquerel.

Graduate routes include two-year master's degrees (many in English), the polytechnicien engineering diploma, joint master's with other Paris institutions and a three-year PhD. Doctoral work is laboratory-based under a supervisor; master's work mixes coursework and a research internship. The academic year follows the French calendar. Doctoral contracts are the usual form of funding. Palaiseau is a research campus town; students travel to Paris by RER for city life.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, École Polytechnique lists 11 graduate programs across 10 subjects: 4 master's programs and 7 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in electrical engineering, artificial intelligence and biology.