MBBS in Nguyen Tat Thanh University Faculty of Medicine

The University and What Makes It Different

Most people just call it NTTU. There's a real story behind that name, actually, and it's worth knowing before anything else — Nguyen Tat Thanh was the birth name of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam's founding leader, before he took the name history knows him by. So this isn't some generic school name. It ties straight back to the country's own history.

A lot of write-ups skip right past this next bit. NTTU was founded in 1999, a private, non-profit school in Ho Chi Minh City, and it sits under the Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group — yeah, a textile and garment conglomerate. Genuinely odd parent organisation for a school that now runs a full medical faculty, if you think about it. Says something about how far NTTU has branched out since it started.

Here's another thing worth knowing. Medicine wasn't part of the picture at first. The Faculty of Medicine only came along in 2014, taking in roughly 400 students in its first year — about fifteen years after the university itself opened. So medicine is a fairly recent add-on sitting next to NTTU's older, much broader base.

It's a private university, recognised by Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training. Students train in Ho Chi Minh City itself — the country's biggest city, and its real hub for hospitals, research, and healthcare infrastructure — so medical students here get real access to a genuinely major urban system.

The Ho Chi Minh City Campus and Its Setting

NTTU spreads across four campuses in four different districts of the city, which is a lot of ground for a private university — over 100,000 square metres of floor space, modern labs, big libraries, thousands of computers. Being in Vietnam's largest city means students aren't scrambling to find a decent hospital network; it's right there.

What genuinely stands out is how international NTTU's outlook has become. It's built partnerships with well over 140 institutions across some 20 countries — UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, that kind of spread — which gives the Faculty of Medicine a more international feel than you'd expect from a purely domestic school.

Course Structure, Cost, and Practical Details

Let's be straight about this. Medicine at NTTU isn't a Staatsexamen-style degree, and it doesn't follow the American-style curriculum some of the newer private Vietnamese medical schools have picked up. It runs Vietnam's own medical education model, treated as MBBS-equivalent, mixing classroom study with clinical training out in Ho Chi Minh City's hospitals.

Vietnamese carries the standard programme. That said, NTTU's been building out English-taught and international tracks across its wider course lineup, which fits its growing focus on international students generally.

Getting in as a domestic student usually runs through Vietnam's national entrance exam system — medicine and health science programmes are exactly the kind of field where those exam results really matter. If you're an international applicant, India included, you'll want to check directly with NTTU what route actually applies to the Faculty of Medicine specifically.

On cost, NTTU's health sciences tuition for the 2026 intake sits somewhere between roughly 43 and 183 million VND a year, depending on the programme, with dentistry at the top end. The university says fees stay fixed once you're enrolled, for the whole length of your course.

Quick Overview

Fee Structure

Why Nguyen Tat Thanh University's Faculty of Medicine Deserves a Harder Look Than You've Given It

A University Named After Vietnam's Founding Leader

Most competing pages don't explain this properly. Nguyen Tat Thanh was literally Ho Chi Minh's own birth name, so this university has a direct link to Vietnam's national history that most institutions just don't have — not named after a generic founder, not named after a town.

A Genuinely Unusual Parent Organisation for a Medical Faculty

A lot of guides skip over who's actually behind NTTU. It sits under the Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group, a state-linked industrial conglomerate — a strange fit on paper for a school that also trains doctors, but it shows how far NTTU's diversified beyond where it started.

Honest Assessment

Let's be honest about a few things. NTTU's Faculty of Medicine is still fairly young, dating back only to 2014, so it doesn't have the decades of medical teaching history that Vietnam's older public medical schools carry. The main programme runs in Vietnamese too, so international applicants really do need to check what's available in English before committing to anything. So who's this actually for? Students who like NTTU's genuinely wide international partnership network and its location in Vietnam's biggest city, and who don't mind confirming language and admission details directly with the school first. If a long-established, English-medium international track is what you're after, some of the newer Vietnamese private medical schools built specifically for international students might suit you better. Still, if a well-connected, city-based university with a genuinely meaningful name appeals to you, NTTU's worth a proper look.