What Is a 'Tiết'? Class Period Times at 4 HCMC Universities (2025-26)

What is a 'tiết' and how many minutes is one university period?

At university, the 'tiết' is the smallest time slot on your timetable. The school does not write 'class from 7:00 to 9:50' but 'tiết 2–4', so first-year students holding their first schedule often have no idea what time to show up. A period usually lasts 50 minutes (HCMUT, UEH, TDTU) or 45 minutes (HCMUTE), and one class meeting typically spans 2–3 consecutive periods. Unlike high school, where the whole country follows one timetable, each university has its own period grid, so you have to look up your own school's table.

The period is also the unit behind credits. So how many periods make one credit? Under the credit system that the Ministry of Education made mandatory from the 2009–2010 academic year, the usual benchmark is 15 theory periods of 50 minutes per credit (one period a week over 15 weeks), plus the self-study time that goes with it. A bachelor's program is usually 120–140 credits, and because everyone registers for different courses, every student's timetable is different.

• Tiết A 45–50-minute slot, numbered from 1 in order through the day.
• Ca A block of consecutive periods; TDTU calls 3 periods one 'ca', with 5 per day.
• Buổi (session) Morning / afternoon / evening — where each session starts differs by school; see the tables below.

What time is period 1? The '6 a.m. university class' story

The rumor that 'university starts at 6 a.m.' is true, but only for some schools. HCMUT sets period 1 at 06:00, in force since semester 2 of 2018–2019, and VnExpress and Thanh Niên covered it widely at the time. In practice, though, regular daytime students are scheduled from period 2 (07:00); the 6 a.m. period 1 and the late period 17 are mainly for the work-study (vừa làm vừa học, VLVH) program. As recently as October 2025, Tuổi Trẻ was still running a debate on whether 6:00–6:30 starts still suit today's students.

Other schools start later: UEH period 1 at 06:20, TDTU at 06:50, and HCMUTE at 07:30. Outside HCMC, Can Tho University (CTU) also publishes its own period distribution table on its new-student site. So 'what time is period 1' has no single answer — you need the table for your own school. The table below summarizes the four schools we cross-checked (the HCMUT grid is reconstructed from official anchors).

The widely shared '17 periods, 50 minutes each, classes from 7 a.m.' table is the HCMUT (Bách khoa) pattern — its regular students start at period 2, 07:00 — but it is often wrongly attributed to HCMUTE. HCMUTE officially runs 45-minute periods, 12 per day, starting at 07:30.

HCMUT (Bách khoa) class hours: 17 periods from 06:00 to 22:10

HCMUT splits the day into 17 periods of 50 minutes, from 06:00 to 22:10. Morning and afternoon periods have a 10-minute break between them, while the evening block from 18:00 runs back-to-back with no breaks. If you are wondering what time period 13 is, it is 18:00–18:50; the following periods start at 18:50, 19:40 and 20:30, and period 17 ends at 22:10. For regular students the real day starts at period 2 (07:00), with courses usually grouped as 'tiết 2–4' or 'tiết 8–10'.

A note on sources: the table below is reconstructed from official anchors (period 1 = 06:00, evening block from 18:00 with no breaks, period 17 = 21:20–22:10) plus OISP's explainer and press coverage, because we could not open the original AAO notice page to cross-check it directly. Periods 2–12 are computed with the 50-minute class + 10-minute break rule; some 2019 reports list 'period 1: 6:00–6:45', i.e. only 45 minutes, 5 minutes short of the 50-minute standard. Double-check once on MyBK before relying on it completely.

UEH period grid: 16 periods and a 75-minute period 7

UEH runs 16 periods from 06:20 to 21:10, split into morning (periods 1–6), afternoon (7–12) and evening (13–16). The easy-to-miss point at UEH: what time is period 7? It runs 11:30–12:45, i.e. 75 minutes instead of 50 — the only non-standard period, so if you work out times by simply adding 50 minutes per period, everything from period 7 onward will be off. Breaks per the official help desk page: 10 minutes after periods 4 and 9, 40 minutes after period 12 (17:05–17:45), and 5 minutes after period 14.

UEH's help page mentions that when five evening periods are scheduled there is a 'period 17' running to around 22:00, but the official table only lists up to period 16 and the exact time of period 17 is unconfirmed. If your timetable shows a period 17, ask your lecturer or the academic office directly.

TDTU period times: 5 ca, 15 periods

TDTU students rarely say 'periods 4–6'; they say 'ca 2'. What is a 'ca'? At TDTU, three consecutive periods form one 'ca', and there are five per day from 06:50 to 20:35: ca 1–2 in the morning, ca 3–4 in the afternoon, ca 5 in the evening. Each period is still 50 minutes; there is a 10-minute break between ca 1 and 2, a 45-minute lunch (12:00–12:45), then 10 minutes each between ca 3→4 and ca 4→5. Regular classes run Monday to Saturday between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., and ca 5 is mostly for English courses and auditing (dự thính).

The table below is taken from the 2025 handbook 'Những điều cần biết khi học tại TDTU' (page 24). The school states that students should be in class 5 minutes before start time and that ca times may be adjusted as needed, so treat this grid as the 2025 version — the older 2020 version had slightly different times (ca 1 ending 09:15, ca 5 running to 21:00). New students should read the latest handbook for their own intake.

HCMUTE class hours: 12 periods of 45 minutes, period 1 at 07:30

HCMUTE — HCMC University of Technology and Engineering, renamed on 26 Dec 2025 from the University of Technology and Education, still called 'SPKT' by students — is the only one of the four schools in this article using 45-minute periods. Its 2025-26 in-class timetable (per Decision 1787/QĐ-ĐHSPKT, 21 May 2025) has 12 periods: morning periods 1–6 from 07:30 to 12:15, afternoon periods 7–12 from 12:45 to 17:30. Breaks: 15 minutes after period 3 (09:45–10:00), a 30-minute lunch (12:15–12:45), and 15 minutes after period 9 (15:00–15:15).

The evening work-study (VLVH) program has periods 13–17, roughly 18:30–21:40 according to a school notice, but per-period times are not clearly published, so they are left out of the table. If you search 'HCMUTE timetable' online and find a grid of 17 periods of 50 minutes with classes from 7 a.m., that is the HCMUT (Bách khoa) pattern, not SPKT — the two are often mixed up because their abbreviations differ by one letter.

How to convert 'tiết 7–9' on your timetable into real clock time

The rule is simple: take the start time of the first period and the end time of the last period from your own school's table. The same line 'tiết 7–9' means 12:00–14:50 at HCMUT (reconstructed grid), 11:30–14:25 at UEH (because period 7 is 75 minutes), 12:45–15:15 at TDTU (exactly ca 3), and 12:45–15:00 at HCMUTE. The gap can be over an hour, so never borrow another school's grid — especially if you copied it from a friend at a different university.

Morning, afternoon and evening sessions have no shared boundaries either: HCMUT's evening starts at period 13 (18:00), UEH's at period 13 (17:45), TDTU's at ca 5 (18:05), while HCMUTE's day ends at period 12 (17:30). For Eastern International University (EIU) we could not find a public period grid in the 2023 or 2025-26 student handbooks, so class times there can probably only be seen on the timetable in the school's AAO portal (aao.eiu.edu.vn, login required); we have not confirmed whether EIU even uses a period (tiết) system. University period grids can change between academic years — trust the latest notice from your academic office over any table online, including this one.

• HCMUT tiết 7–9 12:00–14:50 per the reconstructed HCMUT grid above (three 50-min periods, 10-min breaks) — verify on MyBK.
• UEH tiết 7–9 11:30–14:25 (period 7 is 75 minutes, no breaks in between).
• TDTU tiết 7–9 12:45–15:15, exactly ca 3.
• HCMUTE tiết 7–9 12:45–15:00 (three consecutive 45-minute periods).

Tip: in week one, take a photo of your school's period grid and jot the real times next to the first and last period of each session; by week two you will read 'tiết 8–10' as fast as checking a clock.

On YourCampus: In YourCampus you pick your school once and the timetable shows that school's own period grid, so you never have to convert periods to clock times yourself. App user guide