Insights from the University of Iowa’s December, 2025 Student Survey The college search process is crowded, emotional, and often overwhelming. Prospective students are navigating campus visits, emails, mailers, conversations, and countless digital touchpoints, all while trying to imagine where they might belong. In the middle of that noise, branded merch can feel a bit small. A t-shirt. A sticker. A pen. But when done intentionally, those items do more than promote a logo. They shape how students feel and what they remember. To better understand the role branded merch plays

College t-shirts have always been a symbol of pride, identity, and belonging. From orientation through graduation, students collect them as souvenirs of their campus experience and wear them proudly to show their affiliation. Recently, however, some institutions are rethinking the traditional T-shirt giveaway in favor of a more intentional approach: the t-shirt swap.   A t-shirt swap asks students to bring in a shirt they no longer wear, often from another college or university, and exchange it for a new branded campus tee. What seems like a simple exchange becomes

Over the past couple of years, Magellan has partnered with colleges and universities to launch branded merch choice stores for admissions and advancement campaigns. Each store is tailored to a specific audience and goal, but across programs, clear patterns emerge in participation, efficiency, and engagement. A choice store is a custom online storefront created for a specific group, such as admitted or deposited students, that allows recipients to select their own branded merchandise from a curated collection. Rather than distributing the same item to everyone, choice stores introduce personalization, create