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> France has its own MIT, it's called École Polytechnique

Is EP’s productivity (in terms of companies founded by, landmark inventions/discoveries made by or patents awarded to) comparable to MIT? I thought it was more geared towards producing future politicians.

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Per alumni, it has the same rate of Nobel prize winners as MIT https://www.nature.com/news/where-nobel-winners-get-their-st...

This is a good measure: divide number of Nobel winners by total student population. By that standard, EP seems to be top ranked. The problem is that the last EP student who won the prize was enrolled in 1960s. Many other winners were all the wY back in 1800s. It seems that EP was one of the best institute before WW II but then something happened and things went downhill. This could be great case study.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_École_normale_supéri...

Is number of patents awarded really a good measure of productivity?

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