Nursing students experience multiple stressors as they are expected to apply theoretical learning and develop critical thinking skills while in the professional environment. Perceived overwhelming negative stressors can lead to absenteeism, job dissatisfaction, and a high employment turnover rate. This research compared levels of stress between sophomore, junior and senior nursing students at a public university and a private college, utilizing the Student Nurse Stress Index (SNSI, Jones and Johnson, 1999) and the Nursing Student Demographic Survey. Summary scores from the SNSI suggest that private college students report higher levels of stress than public students in four main areas including: “exams and/or grades”, “amount of classwork to be learned”, “difficulty of classwork to be learned”, and “lack of free time”. Key words: nursing student stress, college student stress, mature college student stress, student anxiety.