" … Surrounding freshmen with images of friends and family, and other objects that remind them of home, might help ease their separation anxiety." …
Maybe more for females than guys.
http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/1091135/gifts-for-homesick-college-students
1st reaction is, it might make them miss them more
That article was just a big ad!
so off mark
Homesick college students? I-I… cannot comprehend.
^^Just wait… a few weeks of cafeteria food will make you crave hommade fare. 
^^My college doesn’t have any cafeteria, only restaurants. Plus, my mother’s cooking is horrendous!
I’m just imagining how much my kid would want to kill me if I chopped up all her favorite t-shirts.
Yeah, this is just an ad.
I actually made my daughter a quilt from her old t-shirts and sports uniforms. The shirts were just being thrown into a bag because she didn’t wear them anymore and didn’t want to throw them out. Though I didn’t make it to remind her of home while she’s away at school, I think she will enjoy using it to stay warm and remembering the process of my making it.
If I wanted to ease my kids’ homesickness, I might make a recording of me nagging them to clean up their rooms, put away their crap, unload the dishwasher, do their homework, fill up the car with gas…
Guaranteed they would be glad they weren’t home!! 
Ad or not, I think a lot of those items are things no college-aged kid would be caught dead having in their room, like the photo quilt. Older kids didn’t have a lot of special tee’s, but I do have a box for each of the three with some of their favorite “little kid” clothes. I’d never cut them up.
Lots of people are homesick the first time they leave home for an extended period, no matter how old they are. Some new college students have never been anywhere before. I think some of the suggested gifts are a bit much, but a small framed picture of the family (or, to be honest, the family pet) would be a thoughtful gift.
When each of my boys went to college, I made them a photo album of their senior years. Lots of pics of family and friends. For ds2, I also made ones for his three bffs. They LOVED them. There’s novelty in an actual picture for kids whose whole lives are digital. How do I know ds1 loved his? Last weekend we moved him into his first post-college apartment, and I noticed that he packed that photo album.
I don’t want to seem like an ad myself, but you can make really nice and reasonably priced photo albums using Snapfish or its competitors. I made a college “yearbook” for my son, and it was pretty cool. It contained pictures I collected during his college career, including some harvested from Facebook.
Yeah, I had to admit that I did quite a bit of FB stalking to get some of the gems that I did.
I think it is better to give them gifts that help them settle into their new community, like gift cards or certificates to places around or just off campus.
I did that, too. ^^^
I’ve done the Snapfish type photo albums for my two girls-they DO love them. I’m planning one for this year’s HS grad, and am already harvesting photos. My older one also bought a large collage frame for photos of her family members. It was one of the only things she insisted on buying to take with her.
My daughter had/has maybe 100 tee shirts from various emo/punk/indie bands that she followed in high school or saw in concert. (Yes… 100) When she morphed out of the emo-band-loving-college student into the professional-young-accountant she is now, she stopped wearing the tee shirts but didn’t want to throw them away.
The tee shirt quilt was the perfect solution. She chose which shirts to sacrifice and I got to arrange them (should The Receiving End of Sirens be placed next to Forever The Sickest Kids? Or not?)
She still says it’s one of the best Christmas gifts ever.