FO Concours d'Admission common mistakes
FO Concours d'Admission · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Reciting articles of the Constitution or of the Code civil from memory without ever applying them to the fact pattern, so the copy reproduces definitions but resolves nothing.
The candidate treats the exam as a knowledge test and revises by memorising lists, often from summaries, instead of practising the commentaire and cas pratique formats that require mobilising a rule on given facts.
What to do instead
For every rule learned, force a written application exercise: take one article, invent a short factual scenario, and write a five-line syllogism (rule, facts, conclusion). Do this at least twice per session and keep a log of rules you could not actually apply.
Producing a commentaire de texte or arrêt that paraphrases the document paragraph by paragraph, with no structure, no problematisation, and no critical assessment.
The candidate has never internalised the expected method and, under time pressure, falls back on linear paraphrase because it feels safe and requires no decision about the plan.
What to do instead
Drill the sequence explicitly: identify the nature of the document, its context, its main issue, then build a two-part plan whose titles state an idea. Practise on a strict 20-minute outline for one arrêt and have it checked against a checklist (nature, context, issue, plan, value) rather than against a model answer.
Answering a cas pratique by giving general law on the topic without qualifying the facts, ignoring dates, capacities, and procedural posture, and forgetting to conclude.
Candidates are trained in dissertation-style general exposition and are uncomfortable with the indeterminacy of facts; qualification is the step that requires the most legal judgment and is the least rehearsed.
What to do instead
Impose a visible three-step layout in every cas pratique: qualification of facts (who, what, when, capacity), applicable rule with conditions, then conclusion for each party. Grade yourself on whether each condition of the rule is expressly matched to a fact.
Writing a dissertation on a public law question that is a catalogue of institutions and procedures without a thesis, or that imports private-law reasoning (contract, liability) where administrative law categories are required.
Public law is often revised as descriptive institutional knowledge, and candidates lack practice in the specific argumentative register of administrative and constitutional law, including its autonomy from private law.
What to do instead
Before writing, state the thesis in one sentence and test every paragraph against it. Build a bank of recurring public-law tensions (légalité et discretion, service public et concurrence, hiérarchie des normes, contrôle restreint et contrôle normal) and practise inserting them as the organising thread of a plan.
In private law answers, confusing the regimes of distinct but adjacent notions, for example obligation de moyens and obligation de résultat, responsabilité contractuelle and délictuelle, or nullité relative and nullité absolue, and applying the wrong one to the facts.
These distinctions are learned side by side in revision and blur under pressure; candidates recognise the vocabulary but have not tested the boundary conditions that determine which regime applies.
What to do instead
Build comparison tables with three columns: criterion of distinction, legal consequence, and a concrete factual trigger. Then practise short exercises that deliberately sit on the boundary (for example a clause limiting liability in a contract with a consumer) so the choice of regime must be argued.
Treating economics questions as opinion or current-affairs commentary, using terms such as inflation, growth, or deficit loosely, with no mechanism, no data, and no distinction between positive analysis and normative judgment.
Candidates from a legal background often lack formal economics training and compensate with general culture, which reads as imprecision to an economist examiner.
What to do instead
For each core concept, memorise a mechanism chain and two orders of magnitude (for example the inflation target and recent euro-area figures, the Maastricht deficit threshold). In essays, separate explicitly a positive section (mechanisms, data) from a normative section (policy debate).
Filling culture générale and actualité answers with vague generalities or recycled media commentary, with no dates, no names, no institutions, and no link to the question asked.
Candidates read the news passively and retain impressions rather than verifiable facts; they also fear being wrong and so retreat into safe abstraction.
What to do instead
Maintain a dated fact sheet of about fifty entries (institution, date, actor, stake, one argument for and one against), updated monthly. In practice essays, force at least one precise reference per paragraph and strike out any sentence that would survive unchanged in an answer on a different subject.
In langues vivantes, translating word for word from French, producing grammatically correct but idiomatic-free prose, or answering a comprehension question by copying long extracts of the text.
Candidates prepare languages by grammar drills rather than by active production, and under exam stress they map French syntax onto the target language instead of using its own structures.
What to do instead
Practise active translation of short legal and economic passages both ways, and keep a personal list of false friends and fixed collocations. For comprehension, train reformulation: answer in one sentence of your own words, then add the quotation that proves it.
Mismanaging time: spending most of the allotted period on a long introduction and a first part, then producing a truncated, unbalanced second part or leaving a question unanswered.
Perfectionism on the opening combined with no rehearsal under timed conditions means the candidate has never calibrated how much can actually be written in the allotted time.
What to do instead
Do at least four full timed simulations before the exam, allocating minutes to each phase (reading, outline, introduction, parts, conclusion) and stopping strictly at each checkpoint. Learn to write the introduction from a pre-built outline rather than improvising it at length.
Ignoring the instruction verb in the question, for example discussing when asked to compare, or describing when asked to evaluate, and failing to answer the actual question posed.
Speed reading under pressure and anxiety lead candidates to latch onto the topic words and start writing from a prepared plan rather than from the specific demand of the prompt.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed first minute: underline the instruction verb and the scope limits (period, jurisdiction, domain), then reformulate the question in one written sentence and check the conclusion against it before handing in.