Image by Ted Bigham, Flickr
College students already spend a lot of time reading textbooks and journal articles, but in their down time, many students enjoy picking up a magazine.
Tastes in magazines vary between the young adult male and female audience. Listed below are the top five magazine subscriptions for college students, starting with the ladies first.
Magazines for College Girls
- Cosmo (short for cosmopolitan, as the magazine targets cosmopolitan women) is well-known for its headlines promising tips for great sex. However, the magazine also includes fashion trends, dating advice, celebrity profiles, and recommendations for healthy living. By covering all these bases, it is no wonder that Cosmo has the largest readership in the college female demographic.
- Seventeen is marketed at teenagers aged 12 to 19. It has a lot of similar content – such as fashion, dating, and fitness sections – that the aforementioned Cosmo includes, but Seventeen has a stronger focus on promoting career-minded women and featuring good role models.
- People magazine provides a weekly update on the latest celebrity happenings and human-interest stories. People enjoys popularity outside of the college market and is the most widely circulated American magazine. It is not a tabloid and has actually won numerous awards for its exclusive articles and savvy advertising.
- Glamour began in the United States in the 1930s and now enjoys local publications in several other countries. It is a monthly publication that features “Woman of the Year Awards” and provides contemporary insight on fashion trends, make-up tutorials, beauty care, love and life tips, and celebrity gossip.
- Vogue is a pre-eminent leader in the fashion magazine industry. Though the products and fashions that it features are out of reach of many college students, young women still enjoy staying abreast of the latest fashion and beauty tips.
Magazines for College Guys
- Game Informer is a monthly publication that features reviews of the latest video games on several platforms, screen shots of new games, player tips, and news of upcoming happenings in the gamer world. Though college males may be busy with their studies, many still make time for gaming.
- Sports Illustrated is a well-established magazine that caters to athletes and sports fans alike. Throughout its history, it has been known for including innovative color photographs of games and athletes, hence the name. It also includes interviews with athletes, insights into player’s private lives, and game scores and predictions.
- Maxim–with its tagline “what men want” and covers featuring skimpily-clad females–is clearly geared toward the male audience. It enjoys a broad readership beyond college students and caters to men who enjoy sports, jokes, entertainment news, and, of course, ladies. Maxim also features profiles of successful career men to offer advice to aspiring adult males.
- GQ, formerly known as Gentlemen’s Quarterly, is a monthly men’s magazine that enjoys worldwide publication. Unlike Maxim or Playboy, GQ chooses to feature men on the cover of its magazine. GQ‘s content ranges from male fashion trends to relationship advice to articles about culture, food, literature, technology, sports, travel, and more.
- Playboy is one of the most well-recognized brands in the world. It got its start by featuring photos of nude women, though the fiction and relevant articles about the “playboy lifestyle” made it what it is today. Playboy caters to men of all ages, and is known for publishing rankings of the top “party schools” in the U.S. each year.
Even though college students are busy with their studies, many make time to read magazines that are relevant to their lives. After all, college is about the all-around experience, not just what is found in textbooks.
Credits: Special thanks to Dan Lewis. Dan works for Priority One Magazines, educating the masses about the amazingness of print publications. Priority One Magazines is a magazine subscription clearing house—so naturally Dan has several of the above mentioned subscriptions himself! He helped us craft this gender-specific list.