The Well-Equipped Student
Preparing a college student for life on campus takes a lot of tech — and money. Here’s what you need and what you need to know.
While shelling out for tuition, room and board, books and endless incidentals, parents of college kids get quickly schooled on the high cost of higher education. And this doesn’t even include the initial cash outlay that comes before a student even steps foot on campus. The annual back-to-school shopping spree is second only to Christmas as the biggest selling season for U.S. retailers. According to the National Retail Foundation’s 2008 Back-to-School Consumer Intention and Action Survey, more than $31 billion will be spent this year to equip the college-bound. And while the NRF predicts a slight decrease in spending compared with 2007 because of the current economic climate, more than a third of the average back-to-college budget (about $600 per person) will be spent just on electronics.
“When it comes to shopping for college items, electronics are usually at the top of the list,” observes NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin. “Somewhere along the line, tech gadgets went from fun indulgences to important necessities.”
Of course, tech such as computers, calculators and alarm clocks are essentials to the collegiate life. But today’s university students hit campuses with more gadgets — mobile phones, portable music players, computer speakers, even flat-screen TVs — than undergrads could even have dreamed about a decade or so ago. To find out what technology the average freshman will need this fall, we talked with upperclassmen and several seasoned parents about how to best prepare your progeny for their first year of college.
Screen test
A computer is typically the largest expenditure in most back-to-school budgets, if the student doesn’t already own one, and laptops are generally preferred over desktops so that students can carry a computer to class, to the library or anywhere else on campus. “I had friends who brought desktops to school and they always had to go to the library when they weren’t in the dorm and needed to use a computer on campus,” says Kerstin Ulf, a senior majoring in advertising at University of Colorado at Boulder. “All I have to do is pop open my laptop and I can use it anywhere.”
Though Ulf thinks that a laptop is the way to go, she cautioned against buying one with a large screen. “It can be a pain since it may not fit into your backpack,” she adds. “I think it’s much more convenient to have a smaller screen. I have friends with laptops with large screens and they end up bringing two bags — a computer bag for the laptop and a backpack for their books.”
The size of the screen also depends on how the computer will be used. Jamie Dillon, a sophomore at the University of Vermont in Burlington majoring in journalism, is an aspiring photographer and videographer. So for his freshman year he bought a laptop with the biggest screen possible so he can edit photos and video. Plus, like most college students, the computer is Dillon’s main source of entertainment and he watches TV and video almost exclusively on it.
Because of this general trend, TVs are less of a must-have item for the YouTube generation than they were for their "All My Children"-addicted parents. “We bought my oldest son a TV when he first went to school but he never used it,” notes Paul DiComo of Baltimore, whose youngest son, Michael, is a senior at Virginia Commonwealth University and whose oldest son, Gregory, graduated from William and Mary College. “When he came home his first summer, he brought it back,” DiComo adds.
But Ulf says that having a TV in her dorm room made it a gathering place for her friends, and she points out that many college dorms are already wired for cable. Sandy Holmes of Los Angeles adds that someone on her son Matthew’s floor at the University of Denver even had a 50-inch flat-panel monitor in his dorm room. But that’s a luxury most parents and kids can leave off their shopping lists.
