Also, I have the feeling that a "great experience" is all relative. I went to a public engineering school in France, for which the student has virtually nothin

Also, I have the feeling that a "great experience" is all relative. I went to a public engineering school in France, for which the student has virtually nothing to pay, and could secure a job in ~ 2 months after graduation without trying very hard (I did an interview in two companies). I was debt free... all my life. I'm not even talking about a prestigious Grande École, just your random everyday engineering school, which you can find in pretty much every region (with often several different schools in big cities). An Engineering Degree is equivalent to a Master’s Degree, and especially well suited to work in ... engineering. There certainly also are private engineering schools, which some of them maybe are less selective or slightly more recognized, but they are monitored by the state in order for the diploma they deliver to have an official value, and they are still far less expensive than private schools in the USA. Well, there also are unrecognized for-profit schools with unrecognized (officially) diploma, or even with funny teaching setups (students teach each others...) but I'm not sure they attract a lot of people. Given they tend to concentrate on only technical and practical stuff, its probably even less useful to go there nowadays. To complete the picture, most people who follow higher education studies in France actually go to the Public University (and not engineering schools) and it is far less selective, so the attrition the first years is quite big - and also it can be less easy to find a job depending on the degree you get and your domain. However, the public university is also obviously virtually free for students (regardless of the prepared degree), and talented students also have usually no pb finding jobs (and at least no insane debt :)