Over the past decades, educational policy implementations in France and Switzerland have increased the eligibility of those completing (upper or post compulsory) secondary education to access higher or tertiary education, by introducing vocationally orientated programs on the upper secondary level that offer access to higher education. Such policies should help to reduce some of the well-known inequalities in the educational system by improving educational achievement of disadvantaged groups such as students with an immigrant background or those coming from low socioeconomic and cultural households. In this paper we wish to clarify not only if, but also how - through which institutional settings - higher education is accessed by male and female students of lower cultural capital (i.e. non HE parental education or "First generation" students (the first of their family to access HE)). We are primarily interested in the possible social mobility for these men and women arising from the aforementioned country-specific educational policies designed to increase the enrolment in tertiary education.