Introduction: Medical and dental students during their course of education may experience stress when their curricular demands tends to exceed their resources to deal with them, and they have been also reported to suffer from higher perceived stress compared to the general population and students in other academic fields. Current study aims to compare the level of stress in first year medical and dental students. Objective: To assess the perceived stress levels in first year medical and dental students. Method: A cross­sectional study was conducted among first year medical students of Al­Azhar medical college and super specialty hospital and first year dental students of al azhar dental college. Where, perceived stress scale ­ 10(PSS­10) was used for assessing the perceived stress levels. The data was entered in Microsoft excel and analyzed using SPSS version 16. Results: Of the 250 first year medical and dental students. Students reported PSS­10 mean score of 23.83(SD 7.08) scores ranging from 7­28. The mean PSS­10 for the medical students was 24.56(SD 7.24) and scores ranging from 8­38 and the mean PSS­10 score of the dental students was 24.66 (SD 7.27) and scores ranging from 7­37. There was no difference in stress levels between the two groups and gender. Conclusion: The study reported that there is a higher level of stress among the medical and dental student than compared to the general population. Also there is no difference in stress level between the two groups. 

Keywords: First Year Medical Students; First year Dental Students; Perceived Stress; South India