Centrale Lyon encourages its students to open up to others and find their own means of self-fulfillment.  We give full scope to initiative, and any educational project the student may propose will be looked into on a case-by-case basis.

Thanks to its bilateral agreements based on mutual recognition of the quality of training, the School offers its students the possibility of doing part of their studies in other French grandes écoles within or outside the Centrale Graduate School, either to specialize in a scientific subject that Centrale Lyon does not cover or to complete their training in certain fields of skill.

In 2002, Ecole centrale de Lyon signed an exchange agreement with Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Lyon (ENSAL) for a double program. During the three years of their course at ECL, the engineering students are offered to study in parallel for their admission to ENSAL. This first part of the double program delivers the ECL engineering degree with an additional degree in architecture and engineering of the ENSAL (a DPEA), which allowed them to enter the ENSAL for a further two years of study, to get an architect degree.