 The students enter the school after highly competitive exams known as the "", following at least two years of "classes préparatoires".The school is known as France's most selective chemical engineering college 

The school is a research center hosting ten laboratories which conduct high level research in various fields of chemistry.The École nationale supérieure de chimie de Paris was founded in 1896 by Charles Friedel, a chemist and mineralogist who headed the school until 1899.