Background: one common mental disorder is anxiety, estimated to 20 percent of the world's population suffers from anxiety. Anxiety is mild, moderate, heavy to the panic that will deeply disrupt the individual's homeostatic and function. Nursing students are who will give nursing care to patients in a professional hospital, so nursing students must take skill tests in the laboratory first and this is what sparked the anxiety in nursing students. Purpose of research: getting an overview of the anxiety level of a nursing student before taking skill tests. Research methods: quantitative with a descriptive design, the population used was 1036 nursing students, the sampling technique was purposive sampling with a sample of 289 people and used univariate analysis. The study was conducted in April - May 2020. Results: mild anxiety level was 101 people (34.9%), moderate anxiety level was 178 people (61.6%) and the level of severe anxiety or panic was 10 people (3.5%). Recommendation: it is expected that further research can develop research by comparing anxiety in level I, level II and level III students in taking skills tests.