3 Great Gift Ideas for Your Soon-to-be College Freshman

It is probably hard to believe, but your baby — the one you watched enter this world, the one you drove to preschool seemingly only yesterday and the one you taught to drive — is getting ready to head off to college. While you are definitely beyond proud of your child, as a dad you are feeling a wide range of other emotions including a twinge of sadness and plenty of love. In order to celebrate this momentous occasion, you want to give your son or daughter a useful and great gift. For example, check out the following three ideas that are ideal for someone who is about to be a freshman in college:

A Snazzy New Smartphone

A new smartphone is the ideal gift for a soon-to-be college student. In addition to helping your kiddo keep in touch with you via text and maybe even a phone call now and then, students can use it for research and homework assignments and of course, take numerous selfies with their new friends. A great choice is the Samsung Galaxy S7. The phone comes packed with a variety of amazing features that are perfect for a college student’s needs. For example, the phone has a 5.1 inch Quad HD Super AMOLED screen that will make it easy for your student to see different websites for school projects, as well as videos and movies. The phone is water and dust resistant, so if your son or daughter accidentally splashes soda or iced coffee on it, it should still keep chugging along. The 12MP rear-facing camera and the 5MP front facing camera can handle a ton of selfies and video chatting, and the 32GB of internal memory means the phone will have plenty of room to store those photos, along with tons of music and more.

Noise-cancelling Headphones

Speaking of music, if your new college freshman loves listening to tunes, he or she will love a new set of noise cancelling headphones. Tech Radar has a helpful list of some of the best models that are currently available; this includes the Bose QuietComfort 25 and Sony MDR-1000X models. In addition to letting your kiddo listen to his or her fave tunes, the noise-cancelling headphones serve a second useful purpose: they can eliminate background noise of chatty roommates. If your sweetie is trying to do her chemistry assignment while the roomies are busy eating pizza and being loud, she can don the noise-cancelling headphones and concentrate on her studies. The same is true for when your son is attempting to do homework at the noisy campus café. Whether the headphones are actually playing music or not, they do a great job of massively reducing any annoying background noise.

A Retro-looking Dorm Fridge

While some dorms provide small refrigerators for their residents, who knows how long they have been around and how many people have used them. In other dorms, students have to bring in their own. In either situation, definitely consider springing for a dorm fridge that your son or daughter can use throughout college. Wal-Mart sells a great retro-looking Igloo version for about 96 bucks; it comes in multiple colors and is 3.2 cubic feet, which leaves plenty of room for your kiddo and his roomies to store their food. The fridge also features a side bottle opener, and it is large enough to store 2-liter bottles of soda and plenty of water and canned beverages.