Why and How Do They Chose to Become Engineers

This paper presents the first results of a still on-going longitudinal and qualitative study with typical students in French "Engineering Schools‟. It tends to prove that a good half of these students, at the beginning of their studies, do not really know what kind of profession they would like to carry on. And nearly a third part of the others choose this course of study because they believe that it is a quite good training, which will allow them to take up the career they are longing for... this latter not being an engineer career! In order to throw some light on these results, we try to give some interpretations, taking into account the specificity of the French Higher Education.