  University students encounter various forms of stress during their academic
journey, including cyclical stress associated with final exams. Supporting
their well-being means helping them manage their stress levels. In this study,
we used a wearable health-tracking ring on a cohort of 103 Japanese university
students for up to 28 months in the wild. The study aimed to investigate
whether group-wide biomarkers of stress can be identified in a sample having
similar daily schedules and whether these occurrences can be pinpointed to
specific periods of the academic year. We found population-wide increased
stress markers during exams, New Year's, and job hunting season, a Japanese job
market peculiarity. Our results highlight the available potential of
unobtrusive, in-situ detection of the current mental state of university
student populations using off-the-shelf wearables from noisy data, with
significant implications for the well-being of the users. Our approach and
method of analysis allows for monitoring the student body's stress level
without singling out individuals and therefore represents a privacy-preserving
method. This way, new and sudden stress increases can be recognized, which can
help identify the stressor and inform the design and introduction of counter
measures.
