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This article examines time schedule’s standards in scientific preparatory classes, and for entry to an engineering school. The data were collected during a four-year ethnographic survey of the École Centrale Paris (ECP) student community. While students’ activities change between the preparatory classes and the engineering school, some time norms persist: in both cases, they are asked to make a rational, intensive and controlled use of their time, assigning it to specific activities. What changes is the form this takes. In the preparatory class, students are enjoined to devote their time to school; in the engineering school there are injunctions to engage, in addition to school activities, in the associative activities of the school.