Stress is a phenomenon present today and affects the community in general, so, diagnose and / or monitor it could allow early and timely actions to achieve psychological well-being in young university students. Objectives. a) Validate the ECEA academic stress questionnaire; b) verify reliability and c) develop the assessment of academic stress by age range and gender in university students. Material and methods. A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out. It was studied in a non-probabilistic way (for convenience) to 1795 university students. Through the survey technique, the Academic Stress Scale (ECEA) was applied, consisting of 54 items and 9 factors. The variables of gender, age, place of residence, type of housing, internet service at home, sports practice and liquor consumption were recorded. The validity was determined by means of construct analysis and reliability by means of internal consistency. Results. The ECEA academic stress questionnaire is valid when showing saturations between 0.40 to 0.69, in addition to the 9 categories and the% explanation of the scale showed 66%. The reliability showed values higher than 0.93. The cut-off points were adopted: <p15 under stress, p15 at p85 moderate stress and> p85 high stress. Conclusions. The instrument to be valid is presented as an alternative to assess academic stress, and can be used in the academic-university context quickly, accurately and at low cost.