This year's incoming college students can probably read a Marauder's Map better than they could a Thomas Guide. If you don't get that reference -- go ask your teenager. 

Every year Beloit College releases a "Mindset List" of 60 cultural landmarks for college freshmen. This year's incoming class, mostly born in 1990, are more familiar with Harry Potter than they are Thurgood Marshall. They have never lived in a world without Seinfeld, caller ID, karaoke, and GPS navigation.

Benoit College began releasing their list in 1998, "to remind professors that references familiar to them might draw blank stares from their students," the AP says. 

So what are some additional trigger points for this year's incoming class? Free refills, Universal Studios and recycling.

As CR80 News reports, "These students have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego and don't know what it's like to stop and ask directions."

"Beloit also noted that 18-year-olds take cell phones and wireless Internet for granted and most likely have already checked out their dorm roommates on their Facebook or MySpace pages," The Post Chronicle writes. 

Beloit's director of public affairs, Ron Nief, says this list is an indication of just how commonplace technology is in the life of most teenagers. As he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a decade ago "Colleges were installing phone lines in individual dorms for the first time. Now students who enter school don't even know why the phone lines are there. … Many haven't used a landline in years."

 

Are you suddenly feeling behind the times? Check out the best GPS systems in our buying guide before heading to the store.

.

Find this story interesting? If so, please click "Buzz up" to let us know.