First check out what, if any, recommendations your school(s) of choice are recommending. Most won’t recommend a specific brand or model but will provide some guidance. In most cases, you won’t need an expensive PC.
I had two kids graduate with their BS in mechanical engineering.
I bought my oldest an moderately expensive laptop thinking that it was the best option. It wasn’t. It wasn’t that big but bulky enough that it never left his room. He then got a larger monitor to use with it, then a keyboard and mouse, then an external hard drive for more storage. Then it broke down and he got a tower to replace it!!!
Just went ahead and bought a desktop machine for my second. She used it for a while then got a real thin, light weight Lenovo laptop. She used it primarily for MS office type work, so it did leave her room. She did a lot of group projects where they would collaborate on the report and it traveled with her. The school had labs where she would do her CAD projects on the school computers which is how just about everybody did it she said. Her desktop didn’t go to waste, she used it as her TV video recorder!!!
So, I was zero for two choosing the right PC.
You might think about how you work. Do you like to work in groups (which I would recommend) or more by yourself? Is your school project based, meaning a lot more collaboration for which a laptop that could go anywhere would be useful?