Self-esteem is, first and foremost, an emotional relationship with oneself, whereby a person expresses their emotional reactions to their inner self, encompassing mental processes, qualities, and states as a holistic image. The structure of self-esteem includes cognitive, emotional, and conative components. The development of a specific individual's self-esteem is a time-consuming process that has its own characteristics depending on their age and life circumstances. The development of self-esteem during college is determined by self-assessments of the effectiveness of self-realization in relevant areas of life. The leading psychological determinants of students' self-esteem are the characteristics of self-perception, the «working» characteristics of the concept within which young people define themselves. This study aims to determine the characteristics of students' self-esteem in different years of study. For this purpose, testing was used as the research method, specifically the self-esteem research method (MIS test questionnaire) by S.R. Panteleev. The experimental base was a group of 53 students (32 first-year students and 21 fourth-year students).