Since the 19th century, its model of education for training generalist engineers inspired the establishment of several engineering institutes around the world, such as the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, Faculté polytechnique de Mons in Belgium, as well as other member schools of the Ecole Centrales Group alliance in France, Morocco, China, and India.

The school was initially located in various premises in Paris, including Hotel Salé (which now hosts the Picasso Museum) and buildings which now belong to Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.

Under Napoleon's initiative for an imperial university, the school was then temporarily renamed as École Impériale des Arts et Manufactures.

The Châtenay-Malabry campus was designed by architect Jean Fayeton [fr], and was inaugurated by President Georges Pompidou, who was accompanied on this occasion by Robert Galley.

The classes préparatoires is itself a selective and academically intensive program that admits less than top 10% of high school graduates in France each year.

For its flagship degree program leading to the French engineer's degree (Diplôme d'ingénieur), in 2016 for instance, École Centrale Paris recruited among the top 4% candidates from prépas for a quota of about 400 students, in addition to some 50 international students from top foreign universities after an equivalently selective process.

[15] International students are first selected internally by their respective home universities on the basis of academic performance (within top 10% GPA) and receive additional training in various subjects including mathematics, sciences, computing, and French language for at least 1–2 years on top of their undergraduate degree program requirements.

International students then apply and compete for admission to each grande école via written and oral examinations, and the application must include 2 referrals by professors, a record of extracurricular achievements, internship or research/project experiences, and a motivation letter.

The school offered a broad range of specialized master's programmes in science and engineering (one-year or two-year programs).