Description: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the various ways in which research knowledge is used by policy-makers and directors of prestigious higher education institutions in launching new policies of positive discrimination in France that serve to legitimise elite selection on a renewed basis. The theoretical framework combines a reflection on research as a legitimising tool in post-modern democratric states with a reflection on how the meritocratic character of elite selection has been eroded in the last twenty years through the increasing visibility of parental and institutional strategies. The purpose of the paper is both to bring new results to bear on these questions and to renew conceptual frameworks, and more particularly Pierre Bourdieu's theories in his books Reproduction and State Nobility. Methodology: The paper will be based on analysis of recent documents on positive discriminationin French and on interviews with several directors of prestigious higher education instutions. Conclusions: The conclusions will insist on the specific nature of elite institutions in their capacity to reinterpret and use research to legitimatise their position as opposed to other kinds of educational institutions and on the links between legitimation and actual transformation.