Abstract: Nursing education is one of the main disciplines in Sri Lankan university system. The major purpose of nursing education is to prepare nurses to meet the health care needs of the community. It has increasingly been restructured to respond the rapidly changing demands. The nursing education has long been perceived that nursing students experience higher levels of stress than other students. Its effects could be reflected in student’s social, mental health and academic performance. This cross sectional descriptive study aimed to identify symptoms of stress and stressors in academic work of nursing students in University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka during July to November, 2013. A pretested questionnaire was used to collect information from randomly selected 100 nursing students. Out of these, 78.6% were female. Among the participants, 28.6%, 33.9%, 23.2% and 14.3% were in first year, second year, third year and fourth year respectively.