Is this a meltdown?

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In certain situations I can easily tell if my reaction to something/s is what I would personally recognise as a meltdown but particularly since I started uni last sept, I've noticed that I very easily get extremely stressed and anxious about managing my work, organising it and getting it done, getting very overwhelmed by it etc. which eventually or generally quite quickly if I'm honest, builds up to the point where it explodes and I present with the same behaviors as I do with a meltdown. Would I be wrong to assume that this is what is happening? I'm just trying to understand things a bit better myself so that I try to deal with them better.
Shut downs also regularly occur but just looking at meltdowns in this instance.

Do you scream in class (or in public) when you get frustrated? Do you visibly stim in these situations? Do you do anything to draw attention to yourself within these settings? Are you able to control the above in public?

If you are unable to control screaming, stimming, or anything attention-drawing, then I would call it a meltdown.

If you are able to control these things in public, but do these things in private, then it's probably not a meltdown.

It's a bit more complex than that (sorry I'm not able to explain myself better) but essentially I am unable to control it. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of things for myself so that I could potentially manage things better to avoid/significantly reduce it happening in the future.

I don't think a meltdown has to be in public.

You recognise your behaviour as the same as your melt-downs from other triggers, so my first thought is that this makes it quite likely that these are melt-downs too.

Although people don't often think of stress or anxiety as sensory things, in reality it does involve a lot of different physical and mental changes - blood pressure rises, heart rate rises, and our body gets flooded with a wide variety of hormones and neurotransmitters. Any of those things may be overstimulating in exactly the same way as the other typical triggers for a melt-down, in my experience.

The only other similar reaction that comes to mind, and is common for people who are very stressed, would be panic attacks. I have had those too, I believe, but to me they felt distinct from a melt-down. Panic attacks seemed somehow more focused - I never completely lost my sense of what was the cause of the panic, and could usually navigate my surroundings well enough to get away. In contrast, when having a melt-down, I find that I am too overwhelmed to remember or care what was the initial trigger until long after the event has passed, and I'm usually too physically incompetent to take evasive action. Of course, it's not impossible that a panic attack could trigger a melt-down, and they might seem more similar to each other for other people.

Whether what you are experiencing can be called melt-downs or panic attacks, I recommend the same course of action - to find something that is effective for the underlying anxiety. This might be medication, talking therapy, or something as simple as some quiet time walking in the park. Medication and CBT have worked very well for me once I found a good counsellor. Since I have got my anxiety more under control, I am having far fewer melt-downs than I used to. I still have the ones triggered by sensory overload sometimes, as I always have, but it's rare that I have the "anxiety overload" ones any more.