In the competitive world of today, nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances. It is amazing what anxiety can do to a person. A huge range of physical or psychological problems can be caused by anxiety. While every one has potential anxiety-prone stressors around him, the population of professional college students, aspiring for a dream career in a dream company is at a greater risk of anxiety. To be able to concentrate on their goal, these students need to be free from anxiety. But, can they be helped? Will experiential learning based placement training help them achieve this? With these research questions in mind, the objective of the study was to reduce anxiety level of professional college students through experiential learning approach. For this purpose, a random sample of thirty-one boy-students and equal number of girl students was drawn and administered SCAT (Sinha's Comprehensive Anxiety Test) (Sinha, A.K.P. and Sinha, L.N.K., 1995) and the scores obtained were treated as pre-test scores on anxiety. Following this, they were given placement training in experiential learning settings. At the end of this training and experiential learning, they were all administered SCAT once again. These scores on anxiety were treated as post test scores. The anxiety test scores before and after the training and experiential workshops were compared and the results showed significant reduction in anxiety level. There was however no significant difference between male and female students on reduction in anxiety level. The qualitative inputs substantiated the quantitative results.
College students, Anxiety, Stress, Phobia, Experimental learning
