HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AGAIN.

Unfortunately I'm not a computer nerd, so I'm not much help here.

Congrats of college, although it isn't as fun as some people hype it up to be. So much work...this is the week before finals and I might die.
Anyways, I'm not a huge computer nerd either, but what you are looking for kind of sounds like the laptop I got for school, which is an Acer Aspire M. It's got an intel core i5 and runs windows 8, which is what's listed on the computer XD I believe it's technically a gaming laptop, and while I do some gaming on it, mostly I use it for papers and such. While I don't have any fancy school programs to put on it being an Animal Science major, it seems to support my art program fine and runs with good speed having four internet tabs open, microsoft word and powerpoint open, and any other things I forgot to close out of :) It might be worth looking into; it wasn't too expensive either because I didn't have a large budget when shopping. Good luck finding something that works :3

I'm a computer nerd... Ask me anything.

First of all, you don't need $1000 to get a decent laptop. I spent 400 on mine and it runs all my games and even Photoshop just fine.

GT and my major require stuff like an I7 multicore processor and such, which limits my selection a bit.

When I bought my computer I tried as hard as I could to get an Intel i5. Ended up getting a dual-core AMD A6 which is pretty equivalent. At that point, I just wanted something that worked. Nonetheless, that's still only $700-900 your looking at.

Yeah I'm still looking at all the options. XD it's a tough decision since there are do many options. I've had a crappy computer the past 4 years so really anything I get will be an upgrade haha.