Introduction. The COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown, and suspension of activities were important psychological stressors. University students are a vulnerable population for high stress levels. Objective. To determine the levels of psychological stress and identify associated factors in the student population of a peruvian public university. Methods. Cross-sectional observational study. We applied an online survey on characteristics related to university studies and the 13-item Global Perception of Stress Scale (PSS-13). The questionnaire was applied in the framework of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. High stress was considered to be those students with a score above the 75th percentile. We compared the mean scores of the PSS-13 according some students characteristics with the Student’s t-test or the Mann-Whitney U-test. In addition, multivariate analyses was performed to recogn...