Oh, I agree, there are many French grads in the world’s top graduate programs. But they didn’t start out at université. Their first two years were in IUT, prépa intégrée, classe prépa, abroad, école postbac (the last 2 growing drastically in the past few years). Sometimes they were selected for the new dual degrees (bilicences) or attended special programs like the UT or Dauphine. But they didn’t enroll in the run-off-the-mill programs which are totally over-run - anyone who has a choice will do anything they can to avoid those. France takes education seriously but for whatever reason these two years are the pits. The lecturer may be good but if you’re sitting in the corridor under electrical wires that fell off three months before and were never fixed, it doesn’t do you any good to know the lecturer’s good.