University students are subject to experiencing a change in their lifestyle during the period of adaptation and development of their professional future as a result of the demands required in the academic environment that can negatively reflect on quality of life and functional capacity. Aspects that influence poor quality of life can have a direct impact on the physical fitness of health students.

To evaluate the functional capacity and quality of life of university students in the health area.

This is a descriptive cross-sectional study with a sample involving university students in the health area aged 18 years or over of both sexes enrolled in a private University Center in the city of Caruaru-PE who agreed to participate in the research by signing the free and informed consent form (TCLE). Functional capacity was evaluated through the six-minute walk test (6MWT) and quality of life through the Short Form questionnaire (SF-36) available online through the Google Forms® platform. Data collection took place between august and october 2022.

A study with 117 participants, a mean age of 22.91±5.38 years, predominantly female (71.8%) and mean body mass index of 24.68 kg/m². The greater participation in the study involved health university students from the first to the fourth period (53.8%) and the physiotherapy course (58.1%). During the assessment of functional capacity by the 6MWT, an average distance covered of 554.61m x 595.38m of predicted distance was evidenced by these university students, which corresponds to 93.85% of the predicted distance for the studied population. Quality of life, when evaluating the domains of vitality and social aspects, scored less than 50 points, which is considered a worrying result.

The present study presented favorable data regarding the functional capacity of these university students, however, the quality of life of these young adults showed negative outcomes in some domains with scores below expectations.

The study generated an alert about the importance of an institutional view for the development of actions that can improve the perception of quality of life and functional aspects of university students, considering that both performance and permanence in the academic field can be compromised.