It would have been good if you had mentioned the degree or discipline of the college student. It is a broader term; it includes English literature graduates and Architectures.nnFor a college student, it is good to buy a good laptop with a fast and powerful processor. Quad-core processors are good for general studies and dedicated studies where students rely on computers for most of their tasks.nnThe speed of the processor should be more than 2 GHz. This is the minimum clock speed I am saying; you try to get more than 3 GHz as most of the quad-core processors offer this range of clock speed.