Academic achievement in higher education (HE) is the subject of a substantial amount of research in the field of educational sciences, mainly aimed at identifying and understanding the factors of academic performance. In France, higher education is divided into a variety of educational institutions, of varying selectivity as well as ranging of academic or vocational nature. However, university continues to welcome a majority of students enrolled in HE and was up until 2018 the only remaining non-selective body in the French HE landscape: the only requirement was the Baccalauréat, the end-of-study secondary school diploma.

However, the comparison of the Baccalauréat pass rate (around 90%) with the Bachelor's first year achievement rate (barely 40%) highlights an apparent dissociation between secondary and higher education. To fight against failure in undergraduate programs, many HE measures have been taken over the years, the latest being the Orientation et Réussite des Etudiants (ORE) Act, in 2018. It introduced a new academic portal for HE application, Parcoursup, and thus, generalised selection, including at university. In continuation, for the first time since 1995, a secondary education reform has modified the structure of the general Baccalauréat, to improve the articulation between secondary and higher education, and therefore improve the Bachelor’s first year achievement.

Until now, the French general Baccalauréat (the most academic, non-vocational path of the diploma) has been characterised by three tracks: a scientific track, a social science track and a humanities track. The scientific track has always been the most prestigious, as it offered the most and the best opportunities in HE, including non-scientific degrees (Dubet, 1991; Duru-Bellat & Kieffer, 2008). For this reason, 40% of students in the science track did not pursue scientific studies in HE: they only chose this track for its reputation as the 'royal way' of the French education system (so for the best students), and not for its scientific curricula (Mathiot, 2018).

This is the reason why the Baccalauréat reform removed these tracks and offered instead a system of combinations of specialities, inspired by the A-level, which provides pupils a new diversity of subject choices. From now on, they must choose three specialities in the second year of secondary school and then keep two in their final year. These specialities are the most important subjects of the Baccalauréat curricula and determine their disciplinary profile. The aim is for them to build up a specialisation consistent with their aspirations for further education.

However, this system introduces many uncertainties. How will the choice of specialities be made? We can assume that the choices will depend on the individual characteristics of the pupils (gender, social background, past academic records…) and on the characteristics of their secondary schools (social composition, reputation and prestige, overall academic level, public or private status, geographical location, size…). Moreover, chances are that some students will reproduce the disciplinary paths of the previous Baccalauréat, especially the scientific track, while others will choose more atypical combinations of transdisciplinary specialities. But we do not know how these choices will affect their achievement chances in the first year of the Bachelor. What are the winning specialities and combinations of specialities in terms of academic performance? Will it remain scientific subjects? (Beaupère et al., 2007). And who will be the pupils informed enough to choose these combinations? If this new system allows for more curriculum diversity, there is a risk that choices will be highly predetermined by individual and contextual factors, resulting in a homogenisation of the students’ characteristics within some subjects, and thus, a loss of diversity, especially regarding gender and social background.

We are building a new database from data collected from the Parcoursup procedure, the university academic record, students’ individual characteristics and public data on secondary schools. We therefore have a variety of variables at our disposal: grades in the various specialities chosen, the average grade at the Baccalauréat, the average grade obtained during the first year of the Bachelor's degree, gender, age, parents' professional category according to a national nomenclature recognised in France (INSEE), the allocation of a grant on social criteria during secondary education, the public or private status of the secondary school, the global social background according to a classification made by the French Ministry of Education (Rocher, 2016), the overall Baccalauréat achievement rate… Our sample is composed of first-year undergraduate students, new Baccalauréat graduates, from a variety of fields of study at the University of Burgundy. This represents a little more than 4,000 new first-year students. Depending on the hypothesis we are working on, we will rely on two quantitative methods. First, the multiple linear regression, according to the “ceteris paribus sic stantibus” (or “all other things being equal”) reasoning, meaning we study the effect produced by a given variable X on the target variable Y, the other variables being held constant. This allows us to adopt experimental scientific reasoning when the study situation is not strictly experimental (Bressoux, 2008). Each modality of the variable under consideration, minus one, is interpreted relative to the reference situation. This way, we are looking for the effect of one variable on another, in a similar way as the experimental reasoning. Second, since our variables admit different levels of hierarchy (individual and contextual), we should use a multilevel regression model. This type of method was initiated and developed in educational sciences (Goldstein, 1995) based on the idea that, for example, a pupil's grade doesn’t depend solely on their characteristics, but also on parameters specific to the school environment (class, school…). As in our research we consider that the choice of specialities depends on individual factors, but also on the context of the secondary school attended, this model should be needed.

Various results can be expected in view of what we know about educational choices in France, but also from what we can learn from Anglo-Saxon studies on A-level. To begin with, academic performance in certain specialities, when it is consistent with the field of the HE courses attended, leads to subsequent achievement. More importantly, performance in scientific subjects is conducive to higher chances of achievement, even in non-scientific HE degrees (Vidal Rodeiro & Zanini, 2015). However, in France, girls have always chosen science subjects less frequently than boys (Duru-Bellat et al., 1993; Stevanovic, 2012; Blanchard, 2021). In the context of the A-level, pupils from the most advantaged social classes are more likely to choose the subjects most sought after by HE institutions, such as sciences, whereas pupils from less advantaged backgrounds are more likely to choose a mixture of non-specialist subjects and subjects that are not popular with universities (Vidal Rodeiro, 2007). We can therefore expect boys and students from advantaged backgrounds to make more specialisation choices that replicate the science track, and fewer atypical choices. Pupils attending selective and private schools are more likely to be oriented towards science subjects, while pupils from non-selective schools are more likely to choose a non-specialised subject combination (Dilnot, 2018; Vidal Rodeiro, 2019). Student guidance as well as access to quality information during secondary education are crucial for making the optimal choice of subjects (Vidal Rodeiro, 2007; Dilnot, 2016). However, socially advantaged schools provide more support to students regarding their choices, based on their HE wishes. Conversely, socially heterogeneous schools have difficulty organising such guidance (Draelants, 2013; van Zanten, 2015). In this respect, pupils who attend selective, prestigious, and socially advantaged secondary schools may be those who make the most favourable choices of specialities for HE academic achievement.

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