Rationale is presented for the derivation of a new measure of stressful life events for use with students [the Negative Life Events Scale for Students (NLESS)]. Ten stressful life events questionnaires were reviewed, and the more than 600 items mentioned in these scales were culled based on the following criteria: (a) only long-term and unpleasant events were retained, (b) items not appropriate to students were eliminated, (c) duplicate items were dropped, and (d) items measuring the same event were combined to form one item. A final pool of 25 negative life events derived from this process comprises the NLESS. The NLESS provides the following measures of negative life event stress: (a) Normative scoring, (b) stress from recent versus distal events, and (c) the number of stressful life events experienced.