We thought of curating this list of fun events for college students as a part of our college event planning series.
As the definition of “fun” varies from person to person, we’ve further categorized the list into:
- Meaningful: These combine community service initiatives with college events
- Career: These help students work on their career goals through events
- Creative: These are simply fun and novel event ideas
Through this list, we want to make the college event experiences fresher and more impactful. Let’s get started.
A. Meaningful and fun events for college students
1. Community Service
A lot of students will show interest in a group outing to communities nearby. Depending on popular demand, pick communities in niches like animal welfare or elderly care.
Being able to make a difference in society will not only be great for the event but also for the student’s development.
2. Donation Drives
You can give students a chance to directly save lives. Partner up with the nearest hospital or blood donation camps.
Give a week’s notice to students so they can ensure their presence on the day of the drive. Then, allow walk-ins and sign-ups for the blood donation.
Do ensure that you give freebies like refreshments or t-shirts to all the donors.
3. Animal Rescue
Collaborate with the nearest animal shelter to come up with fun events for college students. You can either take students for a rescue drive.
Or you can have the animals over the campus for an adoption drive. You can also keep this event open to the public for maximum benefit to the shelter.
4. Agricultural Tours
It is popularly noted that people are losing touch with their agricultural roots.
You can fix this while also organizing fun events for college students.
Take students on a horticulture or botanical tour to the countryside nearby.
Let them connect with farmers and learn more about how produce reaches their plates.
If such a tour isn’t possible, you can even invite local farmers to the campus. Set up a farmer’s market and facilitate conversation between students and farmers.
5. Mindfulness Excursion
Short-form content and digitization have taken over the youth.
The average screen time of college students is 8-10 hours per day.
With this, students don’t even realize the need to de-stress and decompress.
You can host a guided meditation session followed by free meals to give students a break.
B. Career-driven fun events for college students
1. Alumni Sessions
It’s hard to strike the right chords with college students each time. You can make it more relatable by inviting those who have been in their shoes not too long ago.
With alumni students, you can cover a range of topics. For example, if an alumnus has succeeded in building a business, then you call them over for an event.
If you’re organizing events on a larger scale, you can call a batch of alumni over.
2. Mentorship Program
Instead of paying big bucks to trainers outside, utilize your in-house expertise. Students in their senior or final year have already had their learning curve of adapting to adulthood.
They can help the freshers and new joiners get comfortable in college.
It’s a good event to organize as soon as the new batch joins college.
3. Speed Interviews
Yes, speed dating might be more exciting, but in the spirit of student enrichment, try this instead.
Line the tables and chairs as you would in a speed-dating setup. Here, the interviewers get fixed seating. The students can take turns getting interviewed one after another.
This event will be really helpful for the student’s first job, a summer internship, or a part-time job.
This makes for one of the fun college events for college students entering the job market. On the development front, they get a hang of quick thinking and pressure during interviews.
4. Free Photography
A very understatement requirement for when you enter the job market is professional photos. Be it your CV or LinkedIn profile, you need it to make a good first impression.
At this event, students are to dress formally. You can have the photography club or external organization take professional headshots of the attendees.
5. AI Takeover
When AI tools like ChatGPT are the talk of the town, you can’t miss out on this event idea.
Host AI workshops followed by competitions to aid quick learning.
C. Creative fun events for college students
1. Scavenger Hunt
New-age scavenger hunts can be more exciting than you’d like to think.
For this game-based event, you will have to place QR codes across campus. Each QR code, when scanned, should give hints to the next QR code.
All of it would then lead to a bumper prize. Make sure to think through the prizes so that the students are motivated enough.
2. Food-centered Event
For all the food enthusiasts out there, this event will be great. You can pick any cuisine or an iconic dish. For example, you can host a pizza-themed or northeast Indian cuisine-themed event.
With so many variations possible, you can make it an annual event too!
3. Minute to Win It
This is inspired by a famous sitcom with the same name. Here, students have only a minute to complete the curated tasks. This game has multiple rounds and students with multiple points end up winning.
The decor for this event can take inspiration from the iconic TV show.
4. TED Talk
You can organize a TEDx event on your campus through this process. Simply submit your event proposal on the TedX proposal and they’ll get in touch with you.
With their marketing, your event will easily become the talk of the town in no time.
5. Outdoor Movie Screening
Looking for budget-friendly yet fun events for college students?
For this, you can utilize your existing projectors and speakers as the A/V equipment.
Then, put up a bedsheet in an outdoor space like the college lawn. Project a movie that’s in popular demand and also not against any college norms.
You can even sell snacks and popcorn at this event to also have a fundraiser.
6. Food Truck
With the food culture shifting to mobile setups, you can recreate food fests easily.
When there’s good food involved, it is quickly and easily perceived as fun events for college students.
Invite food trucks selling local or international delicacies at the college campus or parking. And that’s one way to elevate or create a fest.
7. Cultural Parties
Students are coming from all parts of the country/world to study at prestigious colleges.
Giving each student holidays for their local celebrations is practically impossible. However, the students do miss celebrating it at home.
For example, Indian students studying in the United States miss the grand Holi and Diwali celebrations.
Given that they can’t be provided with leaves to go home and celebrate, you can do this instead. Have a mini-celebration of their holidays in college.
Allow the students belonging to that particular region or culture to lead the event. Then, of course, every other student is free to join.
8. Themed Parties
You can elevate any existing college event by adding a theme to it.
The theme must be in line with the current trends that the students are following.
For example, Metaverse is a theme you can integrate into your fun events for college students.
9. Graduation Party
While most reputed colleges do have graduation ceremonies.
But only a few go ahead and also have a graduation party.
You can be one of the few to have this most-awaited event in most students’ college life.
It’s an emotional event too as it’s the last celebration a class gets to have before they leave college.
To also add value to such fun events for college students, you can have big companies come over for pre-placement opportunities.
Such a career fair will also be a revenue driver for your event.
10. DIY Room Decor Event
In college, everyone’s trying to build a home away from home.
You can assemble the students to create something that makes their dorm more like home.
This event will be along the lines of a DIY activity. Partner with the college art society to help students make room decor for their dorm. This can include making planters, terrariums, or frames for family photos.
Provide basic art supplies and refreshments to make the event complete.
11. Limited Time Challenge
Any task can be turned into an event if you make it time-bound.
Consider the 24-hour movie challenge for example. Here, people in teams make short films within 24 hours.
You can host similar events for different tasks like building websites, codes, case studies, or art.
12. Comedy Event
Comedy shows have to top the list of fun events for college students. The past decade has seen an increase in comedians becoming celebrities.
This is the best time to give all students a reason to smile. It’s best organized after or before exams as it’ll relieve stress.
13. Camp Night
College students take trips to spend nights under the starry sky.
If you have the necessary infrastructure, then make it happen within the college compound!
Ask students to bring their own tents and sleeping bags. You can then set it up on the college lawn or wilderness nearby.
14. Costume Marathon
We thought of taking an overdone and boring event and adding a twist to it to make it fun.
Based on the track length and infrastructure you have in or around college, design a marathon course.
Keep refreshments along the way to have higher completion rates.
And to make this boring marathon fun, ask everybody to put on a costume. The costumes can be according to the theme you choose.
You can even have costumes that promote sponsorships. This will help you fund the event too.
15. Drum Circle
Drum circles are making a wave as a leading community-building activity.
Here, students form a circle and play dreams to their beat. There’s a drum circle coordinator who helps guide drummers and encourages everyone to participate.
People take turns to play the drums. They can even dance while they wait for their turn.
This activity or event is known to boost happiness and reduce stress.
16. Video Game Tournament
Turn the computer room into a gaming setup. Set up consoles as you normally would and conduct matches between participants in the room.
17. Potluck Party
A classic event every student is bound to enjoy is a potluck lunch or dinner party.
This is also very cost-effective as everybody brings their meals. The event planner only has to arrange for cutlery and decorate the space if needed.
Do ensure that you promote culinary diversity in your event invites.
18. College Olympics
An Olympics event sure sounds tough but it doesn’t have to be.
You can host a laid-back version with childhood games like kho-kho or even board games. This will ensure higher participation and less competition anxiety.
1. What events can be conducted in college?
Colleges usually have an annual festival with the college’s brand colors and mascots.
Then, each college society like tech and arts organizes its fests.
Some other creative events that can be conducted in college are tournaments, donation drives, and 24-hour challenges. Read the full article for more details.
2. How do you host a college event?
To organize any college event, you first need a team of event planners. Then, you need to sit together to understand the event goals and requirements.
Based on this discussion, divide roles based on the strengths and weaknesses of the team.
Then, while each does what their role demands, you need to prepare an event schedule before the final execution.
You can find the detailed guide here: College Event Planning Guide.
E. Message from EventTube
We hope you found some new ideas for fun events for college students.
If you’d like us to continue this series for college event planners, do comment below.
We’d love to hear how we can give creative solutions to your event planning needs.