Background: Perfectionism plays an important role in nursing students’ adjustment to training in the nursing profession. Self-compassion is among the characteristics that nursing students need to have to be empathetic with themselves and with patients. Perfectionistic students develop a strict thinking that hinders a compassionate attitude towards oneself causing greater depressive symptoms. Aimed to: Assess perfectionism, self-compassion and depressive symptoms among nursing students. Design: Cross sectional descriptive design was used. Setting: The present study was done at Technical Institute of Nursing Zagazig University. Subjects and methods: 280 nursing students were selected for the study by stratified sampling technique. Tools of data collection: The first tool composed of two parts: socio-demographic data sheet, and Hewitt and Flett's multidimensional perfectionism scale. The second tool was the Neff’s Self-Compassion Scale, and the third tool was beck depression inventory scale (BDI-II). Results: 95% of the students had high level of perfectionism, 74.7% of nursing students had moderate level of self-compassion. Furthermore, the study revealed that statistically significant weak to moderate negative correlations were demonstrated between the scores of students` self-compassion from one side and each of socially-prescribed perfectionism and depressive symptoms scores. Conclusions: The majority of nursing students had high level of perfectionism, and moderate level of self-compassion. Additionally, socially-prescribed-perfectionism was an independent negative predictor of self-compassion, and self-compassion was an independent negative predictor of depressive symptoms among nursing students. Recommendation: Effective self-compassion interventions could be targeted to students who have perfectionistic thoughts to increase level of kindness, and thus decrease perfectionistic thoughts. Experimental study is suggested to manage perfectionism in nursing students. Key words: perfectionism, self-compassion, depressive symptoms and nursing students. مقدم البحث توقيع مقدم البحث صفية رجب السباعي حسين