I've got a 4 year old MBP that does just fine.

Yes the dedicated graphics card is nice, but only really necessary for 3D. You may end up doing some 3D modeling though.

You can and should run windows on your mac. They've made it super easy to run two OS's on macs.


As a matter of fact, i've got OSX 10.6, Win 7, Win XP, and Ubuntu Linux 10.10 all on my MBP.
Quad boot baby.

You may want to go a talk to the people at MacMico on campus... they are familiar with what computers are suitable for which program. When you buy on campus some computers also have education discounts and the "Back to School" bundles and specials should be out by the end of next week.