What are college kids drinking these days?

We randomly got an email from OneClass this week — an education service that uses technology to help college students study more efficiently. In its blog, the company provides info concerning important trends and events happening in the education sector at large. So, why did they contact CBB, a website for craft beer professionals? Well, they recently conducted a study to answer the most important of college educational questions: What are college students drinking?

The “What is the Most Popular Alcoholic Drink for Students?” study by OneClass is based on survey data collected from 580 college students in the United States and Canada across 49 schools. 180 males, 398 females and two who preferred not to identify their gender participated in the survey. Students were engaged on social platforms. This survey was conducted from October 24, 2019 to November 18, 2019.

Thanks to OneClass for sharing the results with us.

You guessed it: liquor and hard seltzers top beer and wine

The strong majority of respondents (61%) claim to prefer liquor and 16% prefer hard seltzers. According to a Gallup poll with over 1,000 adults, beer was the most favored drink in 2018 with 42% preferring beer over wine (34%) and liquor (19%). However, when comparing with this study, the results differed with liquor being the most popular at 61% favoring it and only 13% favoring beer.

Sales of hard seltzers have grown about 200% over the past year with 164.3% of that grown happening in July alone, giving the drink so much popularity that it has passed beer as a favorite drink among college students, according to the OneClass study.

Male students are 8.5x more likely to favor beer than female students

Both genders favor liquor, but when it comes to the other types of alcohol, the results were diverge. Females in the poll were two times more likely to favor hard seltzers and wine over all types of alcohol than males.

But: 35% of male students favor beer above other drinks. So, yes, while hard seltzers are growing quickly in popularity, beer still seems to be a favorite among male students.

Favorite brands

Of those who chose beer as their preferred drink, the top ten brands in order were, of course, disgusting: Corona, Bud Light, Coors, Busch, Natural Light, Michelob, Miller, Budweiser, Hamm’s and Keystone. The remaining votes were thinly spread out over other brands such as Stella Artois, Guinness, Dos Equis, etc. Corona comes out as the most favorite beer brand among college students with Bud Light and Coors tailing closely behind.

There are stats on favorite wine, hard seltzer and liquor brands too, but that last one was so depressing this seems like a good place to stop. Head here if you’d like to see the rest.