Which is the best Grande École for finance in 2026?
Think you go to a good school? How about a great school? Yeah, maybe your undergrad isn’t so bad, but in France the best schools are called great officially, and they are pretty great. Financial services firms love hiring them – but not equally. So what is the best Grande École, as they’re called, in France?
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As in 2023, when we last analysed our database, the best Grande École in France was HEC Paris. It’s no surprise – HEC is very generally considered the best business school in France, including by other rankings such as the FT’s and QS’. An alumni list would be impossible to provide succinctly, but the most famous is probably François Hollande, former President of France.
In second place was ESCP, another Paris-based Grande École. ESCP was only 8th overall when we last ranked France’s Grandes Écoles – it grew substantially between the two rankings. Some of ESCP’s most notable alumni include François Pauly, CEO of private bank Edmond de Rothschild Group, and Patrick Cohen, CEO of asset manager AXA’s French business.
In third place was Paris Dauphine, which is part of PSL University. Ranked fifth last year, it climbed up the ranks less dramatically than others. Alumni include Emmanuel Roman, CEO of American investment management firm PIMCO.
Four engineering schools were present in the top 15. These did not enter the ranking on any technicality; they are legitimately good schools for a career in finance, and not just quantitative finance, either. Mines Paris, for example, was founded as a school of mining – but includes among its alumni Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, CEO of France’s pre-eminent bank, BNP Paribas. École Polytechnique, a university loved by electronic trading firms, is also in this grouping.
Not all universities rose up the rankings, of course. One of the more disappointing was Sciences Po, which is the school that French president Emmanuel Macron attended. Sciences Po also includes SocGen CEO Slawomir Krupa among its alumni.
A note on methodology for the scores below. It is based on eFinancialCareers’ CV database, searched in October 2026. We counted every CV that mentions each school, whatever the program. The first value is the number of those CVs per 1,000 of the school’s published alumni. The second and third are the share of its CVs in front-office jobs that are at the top 20 banks in our 2025 Ideal Employer ranking, and at 12 leading boutiques. The fourth and fifth are the share of all its CVs at the ranking’s top 10 asset managers, and at its top 10 hedge funds and top 10 private equity and credit firms. On each measure the best school scores 100 and the lowest 0, and the final score is the average of the five.
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