Student recruitment is an increasingly important topic and a major challenge for engineering schools all over Europe, which have difficulties in attracting and enrolling gifted students. On the contrary, French graduate engineering schools attract the most talented students of the nation. What are the forces at play? The aim of this paper is to investigate the decision-making processes behind the students' choice of engineering school. We carried out 18 semi-directive interviews with engineering students of three French graduate engineering schools and completed content analysis of our data. Based on the findings, we identified various individual, social, economic and institutional factors influencing the students' choice of engineering school. The findings indicate that the pre-university model (preparatory classes) has a key influence on engineering schools' recruitment process for attracting talented students.