A 2026 gift guide for college students, care package included

The first CARE packages reached Le Havre, France, on May 11, 1946. They were U.S. Army surplus "10-in-1" rations, each meant to feed 10 soldiers during an invasion of Japan that never happened, and $10 sent one to a family in Europe. CARE went on to deliver about 100 million of them, and "care package" became the name for any box sent to someone far from home.

When I (the guy who built WishPoster) went off to college, the care packages from home meant a lot to me, even if I didn't admit it at the time. So here's a wishlist for a college student living in a dorm. It has things for the room, a bike lock, a laptop, a book about studying, a plane ticket home and a dinner out, plus a care package's worth of cookies, ramen and sick-day supplies. It runs from instant ramen and Command strips up to a $599 MacBook Neo, not counting the plane ticket. Pick the items you want with "Add to wishlist," or take the whole list with the button at the bottom:

Some links above earn WishPoster a commission. As an Amazon Associate, WishPoster earns from qualifying purchases.

For the room

Most dorm beds are Twin XL, which is 38 inches wide like a regular twin but 80 inches long instead of 75.

Case Western's fire safety page puts it plainly: "The use of extension cords in residence halls is prohibited!" What schools usually allow instead is a UL-approved power strip plugged straight into the wall. SMU's housing rules also ask for a reset switch, and no plugging one strip into another. Rules vary by school, so check the housing page before buying one.

3M released Command strips in 1996. The adhesive holds until you pull the tab straight down, which stretches it and lets it go. 3M lists painted concrete cinder block among the surfaces they work on, as long as the room is between 50 and 105 degrees when they go up.

The lock

In September 2004, a video spread online showing a Kryptonite tubular lock opening with the empty barrel of a Bic pen. A bike shop employee did it for a New York Times reporter in about five seconds, and the trick had been described in a cycling magazine as early as 1992. Kryptonite offered owners a free exchange and switched to a disc lock mechanism, which is what the Evolution line uses.

The laptop and the book

Apple released the MacBook Neo in March. It runs on the A18 Pro, the chip from the iPhone 16 Pro, and it launched at $599, or $499 for students. In June, Apple raised it to $699, or $599 through the education store, and blamed a shortage of memory chips. It has 8GB of memory that can't be upgraded and no backlit keyboard. The 13-inch MacBook Air went up to $1,299 at the same time.

Make It Stick is by a writer, Peter C. Brown, and two cognitive psychologists at Washington University in St. Louis. It argues that rereading and cramming are mostly a waste of time, and that quizzing yourself at regular intervals works better, even though it feels harder while you're doing it.

The care package

Most of the middle of the list fits in one box. A USPS Medium Flat Rate Box costs the same to any address up to 70 pounds. A temporary increase adds $1.48 to that box through January 17.

Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald opened Levain as a bread bakery on West 74th Street in New York in 1995. They were training for triathlons and made a big chocolate chip walnut cookie to keep their energy up. Each one weighs a little under half a pound, and Levain bakes them to order and ships them from New York.

Seth Berkowitz started Insomnia Cookies in 2003 by baking cookies and delivering them to other students late at night while he was at Penn. There are more than 265 stores now, most of them near college campuses.

Momofuku Ando built a lab in a shed in his backyard in Osaka to invent noodles people could make at home. Watching his wife, Masako, fry tempura, he saw that hot oil drove the moisture out, and that fried, dried noodles would soften again in boiling water. His Chicken Ramen went on sale in 1958, at six times the price of a bowl of fresh noodles. Cup Noodles followed in 1971 and came to the U.S. in 1973 as "Cup O'Noodles."

Getting home

The TSA screened 3,133,924 people on November 30, 2025, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It's the busiest day in the agency's history, which is why the note on the ticket says Saturday.

In conclusion

The list above copies straight into a new WishPoster list with the Corkboard theme: string lights, photos and a takeout menu pinned to cork, and the title on an index card. Or start one from scratch and send the link to whoever's packing the box.