El-Wakil's early education in Egypt was at the British schools of Victoria College and the English School. In 1960, he obtained his GCE and graduated with a distinction in Applied Mathematics, Art, Physics, and Chemistry. In the same year, he joined the Faculty of Engineering at Ain Shams University and in 1965 acquired his BSc in Architecture with Distinction and First Honours Degree. It was while studying for his degree that El-Wakil became acquainted with the writings of English critic John Ruskin. Ruskin's descriptions of what he termed an "arborescent" quality in architecture (where a bold structure of decoration, legible at a distance, reveals ever-finer sub-structures as you approach it) had a lasting effect upon him.