during the summer, these high school students who are already preparing by strengthening their file

2023-08-18 15:00:09
On the site of the Parcoursup higher education assignment platform, in January 2023. DAMIEN MEYER / AFP

This year, Farida Sadat and her son are not going on vacation. Alexandre enters the final year at the Janson-de-Sailly high school, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, at the start of the school year and will then begin to face the dreaded Parcoursup, an assignment platform in higher education. So, for the 16-year-old, July and August are all about internships, volunteering and videos to start getting to grips with how the platform works.

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For two years, Farida Sadat has been one of the delegates of parents of students: the implementation of Parcoursup “has no secrets” for her, laughs the fifty-year-old who wants her son to put “every chance on his side” in order to enter medicine. On the platform, it is therefore the “activities and centers of interest” section that is in its line of sight. A section that replaces the old “CV Parcoursup” and allows candidates to provide information on these extracurricular activities through four sub-sections: “my coaching or animation experiences”, “my civic commitment”, “my professional experience” and finally “openness to the world”.

If it is not obligatory, it does not remain about it less “valued” through training, assures the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, on the site dedicated to the platform. So, since the 2nd class, Alexandre has been doing internships: a day in pharmacy, a day at the hospital, and then, in the summer of 2022, a universal national service (SNU), carried out in Colmar. For two weeks, in a department different from his own, for a “cohesion” stay. Then, the second phase of the SNU, which corresponds to the realization of missions of general interest in various fields (solidarity, health, environment) for a minimum of eighty-four hours, outside school time. “At first, I did it for Parcoursup”he admits he is young. “My mother told me about it and told me that it could earn me points for my Parcoursup file, so I went, but in the end, it taught me a lot”he believes.

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Parcoursup is “also very distressing for parents”, confides Ms. Sadat. To counter the uncertainty, she has set up a well-established system: beyond the summer holidays, her son has followed, every school vacation since the 2nd, a private preparation, Médisup. ” It is necessarily a significant cost, between the private preparation, the hours of additional mathematics lessons, I think I have already paid 6,000 euros, so besides that, I am careful »she says, acknowledging that “this is not possible for everyone”.

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