École normale supérieure

The École normale supérieure (ENS) is a French grande école in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, on rue d'Ulm. It was founded in 1794 to train teachers for the Republic and took its present Ulm site in the nineteenth century. It remains a small residential school for science and the humanities, linked to Université PSL, rather than a mass university.

Teaching is organized in departments spanning mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, geosciences, and the humanities and social sciences. Normaliens follow a curriculum that mixes ENS seminars with degrees at partner universities. Laboratories on and around the Ulm campus, including units associated with CNRS, are the main research setting for graduate work.

The school enrolls about 2,300 students, including civil-servant normaliens selected by competitive examination and a growing share of international master's and doctoral students. Faculty and alumni include many Nobel laureates and Fields Medalists. Notable figures associated with ENS include Louis Pasteur, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault.

Graduate study runs through master's programs, often jointly badged with Université PSL, and a path into doctoral work in Paris laboratories, with close tutorial supervision rather than large lecture faculties. The French academic year runs from autumn to summer. Many French students hold normalien status with a salary-stipend in exchange for a period of public service. Daily life is a Left Bank residential campus near the Latin Quarter.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, École normale supérieure lists 1 master's program, in mathematics.