* Introduction * Depression is a public health problem and constitutes the most frequently psychic manifestation observed among students. Its prevalence is much higher (30%) than in the other populations. Depression among students can have negative impacts on their social, relational situation and significantly impact their quality of life. Depression is misdiagnosed, misdetected and thus mistreated. In clinical practice at the University, the clinician finds difficulty in correctly diagnosing depression comorbidity including depression with a physical illness and/or somatic problems. It underestimates or overestimates depression (false negative diagnosis or false positive diagnosis). The difficulties of diagnosing depression and overlap with the physical symptoms of the disease are the challenges for the clinician to differentiate if certain symptoms are related to depression or physical illness. Thus, the difficulty in detecting and/or diagnosing depression can lead to false diagnoses of depression. So to avoid the false diagnosis of depression in the university context or in the disease, we must take into account the cognitions of depression. The BDI-FS, self-assessment scale to detect depression, considers these cognitions and therefore avoids the false diagnosis of depression in the presence of problems (such as a physical illness or somatic problems) and properly detects the depression. * Objective * This article presents the French validation of the Beck Depression Inventory-Fast Screen (BDI-FS Inventory) on a sample of students. * Method * A cross-sectional study was conducted on 473 students of the University of Caen Normandy. * Results * The Beck Depression Inventory-Fast Screen-France (BDI-FS-Fr) gets a good sensitivity, specificity and good positive and negative predictive value, a coefficient of Yule very strong and area under the curve satisfactory. He has a very good internal validity of structure: an exploratory factor analysis identified a factor that explains 40.21% of the total variance of the BDI-FS-Fr, and he has a satisfactory internal consistency (0.74). The BDI-FS-Fr has a very good external validity of structure (construct validity: convergent and divergent validity; P < 0.001) and discriminate validity (P < 0.001), and concurrent validity (P < 0.001). The split-half reliability (odd-even) was 0.73 (P < 0.001). The test-retest reliability was 0.82 (P < 0.001). Regarding clinical practice in the University, clinicians can use a simple questionnaire include 7 items (Beck Depression Inventory-Fast Screen-French: BDI-FS-Fr) to assess depression avoiding false diagnosis of depression in the University. The BDI-FS-Fr only evaluates the non-somatic symptoms (cognitive) rather than physical symptoms (somatic), which may overlap with problems due to the university or physical illness and depression may overlap. The BDI-FS-Fr only includes items the BDI-II that are related to the direct psychological experience of depression. Thus, the key strength of the BDI-FS-Fr is that it prevents symptoms of physical illness (e.g., weight loss, difficulty concentrating) from confounding the psychodiagnostic picture. The BDI-FS-Fr also allows us to evaluate the two diagnoses DSM-IV-TR (the main symptoms of depression: sadness and anhedonia). It also allows us to observe and assess the risk of suicide in people (ex. students and patients) by observing the items 2 (pessimism) and 7 (thoughts or desires of suicide) that are considered suicidal risk indicators. The BDI-FS is a diagnostic tool that minimizes the risk of giving falsely high estimates of depression in subjects focusing on the cognitive symptoms of depression. For pre-cited reasons, the clinicians can use the BDI-FS-Fr among students to diagnose their depression and assess their risk for suicide without false negative or false positive diagnosis.* Conclusion *The French version of the BDI-FS has very favourable psychometric properties. It is valid for self-assess depression, its intensity and its evolution, and it is a good complement to BDI for students. The BDI-FS-Fr thus has very good psychometric properties and is a useful tool for researchers and practitioners.