The type of computer you will need for school depends entirely on what your taking . Is this for high school or college. My oldest daughter majored in Art and required a computer that was capable of running programs like Photoshop ,Illustrator, Maya ,all of which are graphics intensive . We got her an iMac , My sons major was Computer Engineering . He needed to run VMs and virtual servers so for him we got an IBM with an i7 processor and 16gb of ram . Each of these machines were in excess of $2000. However my youngest is a Linguistics major and we were able to get away with a simple ultrabook for her . What you get for a computer depends on what your class needs are. One thing you may want to take into consideration is wieght . My youngest has a 40 minute commute to school on subway and bus each day and in her first year she had a 5lb laptop . She refered to it as lugging her baby around . Its heavy and you have to be careful with it . This year we got her an Asus UX360CA . She loves it its light and small. It folds around and you can use it like a tablet. These are things to take into consideration when buying for school . Let use know what your going to use it for and we'd be glad to help
Hope this helps