This article seeks to examine the foundations and effects of the social justice model promoted by the Science Po Paris Priority Education Convention (CEP) competition. It is based on the databases of the Science Po School Department, interviews with candidates and jurors and a lexical analysis of the assessment grids for admission interviews. This model of positive discrimination ‘à la française’ is paradoxical. It proposes a renewed vision of merit as recognition of singular talent, which is supposed to put its strictly academic dimension into perspective and break with the principle of standardisation of assessments. However, far from disappearing, this academic dimension is reconstituted in the selection procedures and continues to favour the best pupils at school, some of whom come from higher classes, and among them boys. Far from being homogeneous, the recruitment of the CEP is based on two pools of candidates at school, socially and territorially contrasting.