Moroccan preparatory schools are making waves in France. According to Le Figaro, they dominate the rankings for foreign schools sending students to top French engineering and business schools.
Lycée Mohammed VI d’Excellence (Lydex) in Benguérir leads the pack, with nearly 18% of its students making it into École Polytechnique (X) over the past three years. Lycée Méditerranéen (Lymed) in Tétouan and Lycée Al Zahrawi in Rabat follow, while other top performers include Lycée Moulay Driss in Fès and Lycée Ibn Ghazi in Rabat.
Moroccan students remain the largest foreign group at X. The maths-physics programmes in Morocco are tough, often more demanding than European standards, which helps explain the strong results. For the Mines-Ponts exam, 22% of Moroccan candidates were successful in 2026.
In business streams, Casablanca’s Groupe Scolaire La Résidence tops ECG, with La Résidence Bouskoura and Lycée Ibn Ghazi close behind. In ECT, ESTEM Casablanca leads with 36 admitted students, followed by La Résidence and La Résidence Bouskoura.
Each year about 10,000 students get into Moroccan preparatory schools out of 55,000 applicants. Around 40% of Lydex students have excellence scholarships. Morocco has 54 CPGE centres, and roughly 45% of foreign students admitted to X come from Morocco.
The success is impressive, but nearly 80% of Moroccan engineers trained in French grandes écoles start their careers abroad. Policymakers are now looking for ways to bring this talent back to help national projects like green hydrogen and automotive development.
