“It’s hard to see others go to school”: these high school graduates without a solution on Parcoursup who are turning to the world of work or studying abroad

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She dreamed of college. Instead, Lina Nadjem does the washing up in a company restaurant. Despite a good final year average, the young high school graduate did not obtain the psychology or law course that she had hoped for. “It’s hard to see others go to school, get up in the morning and I don’t. For a long time I was unwell, then afterwards I told myself that I was going to come to work,” she says.

Last January, Lina entered her ten wishes on Parcoursup. In June, the result came: too many students in the chosen courses. She is on the waiting list. She is slow to validate a backup solution. At the start of the school year, no more recourse. “In psychology, we said that it was dead because there was no more room. That it was too clogged and that even with withdrawals, there were too many requests. In the end, we no longer really contacted each other,” she continues.

“Friends quickly recommended Belgium to me”

Without a solution, some even make a radical choice: to study in Belgium. “It’s a bit of the sacrifice we make to do the studies we didn’t have the chance to do in France,” explains Christophe Gerbino. A third of the students at this school are French, and they all tell the same story. "We do our schooling in France so as not to be caught, it's a bit complicated. I was lucky to have friends who quickly recommended me to Belgium. In any case, we had to react quickly," confides Jérémy Chereau, architecture student.

The ministry does not give official figures but according to the unions, there are hundreds who do not have an assignment this month of October. Parcoursup has become the bane of high school students and the nightmare of their parents, who complain about it on social networks.

The Minister of National Education wants to correct it, but for him the platform is also a tool for social diversity. “There have never been so many students from the academies of Créteil and Versailles, and particularly from Seine-Saint-Denis, who study in Paris as since there was Parcoursup,” says Edouard Geffray, the Minister of National Education. Between overcrowded sectors and the complexity of the platform, the Ministry of Higher Education must formulate proposals by October 20.