6 ideas
The competitive entrance exam rewards dispositions such as ease, verbal brilliance, and familiarity with legitimate culture, which are acquired in privileged families rather than taught at school. Social inheritance is thereby laundered into academic merit.
Elite diplomas work like noble titles. They confer a durable, legally guaranteed status that certifies the holder's essence rather than a specific competence.
Admission to a grande école is a magical act of consecration more than a selection. It draws a sharp boundary between the last admitted and the first rejected, even though they differ trivially. The boundary transforms both how others see the elect and how the elect see themselves, producing confidence and a sense of vocation.
Teachers' evaluative adjectives, such as "brilliant", "heavy", "scholastic" or "distinguished", appear to judge intellectual quality. They actually track the student's social origin and bodily hexis. These categories let a teacher perform social classification sincerely while believing they are assessing pure intellect.
The field of power is a space of struggle among fractions holding different kinds of capital, chiefly economic and cultural. The grandes écoles map onto these poles: business schools lean economic, the École normale supérieure leans intellectual, and ENA sits in the bureaucratic middle. Where a school sits in this space predicts its students' origins, dispositions and career trajectories.
Direct transmission of property and position has become less legitimate. Dominant families therefore increasingly rely on the school system to pass on their standing through statistically guaranteed but individually uncertain academic success. This mode of reproduction is more acceptable because it operates through meritocratic procedures. That also makes it harder to contest.