I used to work at a college and there simply is not enough information to really suggest anything. What type of student and what major? For instance If this student is on the IT path they may need a system that needs the power to run several virtual systems, programming applications, etc. etc. The student may not need a large system but may need a total power house so now your look at Processor power and speed, total ram, the ability to upgrade to a certain amount of ram, and obviously the ability to run all their software. Now this system can be anything from $350 (and this system will most likely need to be upgraded adding more) to $3000, it can be stacked from the store or upgraded.
For my legal students they may need a bigger system with a big monitor that they can put many documents on side by side. They may not need the processor speed but will need a good amount of RAM. SO you could be looking at $200 -$1000.
For my medical students most of their work can be done on an average system but they may need to carry their system around when they intern so I suggested something that was smaller and now I would direct them to a tablet rather than a laptop depending on more specifics. For instance a lot of software on says Windows/Macs may not work on any tablet as the operating system will be like Android or Surface. IPad seems to be better in terms of medical Citrix Cisco and a bunch of other big companies cater to them as this has become more popular with consumers.
SO on and So on with more information I’m sure we can help more but again there will always be preferences also which is why people yell out Macs, Chrome book, Dell, blah blah blah. As an individual maybe you only like Apple products which are much more expensive and typically less problematic but are not used as widely as Windows. They only update their system once a year leaving possible issues open for longer but windows actually has terror Tuesday’s where they push their updates to any system that allows them to without knowing (or caring) what effect that may have on end users. So with more info we can help you pick your poison.
My preference has always been Windows there is nothing you cannot do with any operating system now a days so that is my preference. I don’t like commercial Dells like say the latitudes always has issues for me but I like the Inspiron, but I also do not like AMD as much as I like Intel in terms of the processors. I also would not use windows 8 yet some software companies do even have stuff for it yet so I stick with Win7, now I am in IT and this is based solely on my experience with laptops, so many others would disagree. For instance Toshiba has very high ratings and seem well deserved but VIAO by Sony also has high ratings but both tend to be less efficient in the field for me but make a good personal laptop.