Required Laptop Recommendations

A laptop is an essential tool for learning and professional work in the programs at CEMS. Many courses in CEMS utilize laptops during class time to promote more active and engaged learning. To best serve our students, we have the following recommendations for laptop purchases as well as requirements for students who may already own a laptop prior to being accepted in to CEMS.

Our recommendations are broken down by major/department, as the requirements of the applications used in each major are different.

Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science

For our Math, Stats, and Computer Science students, we recommend the following computers, a 13” Dell XPS (touchscreen or non-touchscreen) or 13” Apple MacBook Pro.

Dell XPS 13 9315 (Non-Touchscreen)
-12th Generation Intel Core i5-1230U
-16 GB Memory (RAM)
-512 GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
-1920x1200 Display
-Windows 11

Purchase link, redirects to UVM Bookstore

We strongly recommend students purchase a 4-year warranty plus accidental damage with their Dell laptop. This will help to protect your laptop in case of failure/damage and most service can be performed on campus through the UVM Tech Team.

Dell XPS 13 9315 (Touchscreen)
-12th Generation Intel Core i5-1230U
-16 GB Memory (RAM)
-512 GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
-1920x1200 Display
-Windows 11

Purchase link, redirects to UVM Bookstore

We strongly recommend students purchase a 4-year warranty plus accidental damage with their Dell laptop. This will help to protect your laptop in case of failure/damage and most service can be performed on campus through the UVM Tech Team.

Apple 13” MacBook Pro
- Apple M2 chip with 8-core CPU and 8 core GPU
- 16 GB Memory (RAM)
- 256 GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
- Retina Display
- macOS 12 (Monteray)

Apple MacBook Air
- Apple M2 chip with 8-core CPU and 8 core GPU
- 16 GB Memory (RAM)
- 256 GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
- Retina Display
- macOS 12 (Monteray)

Purchase link, redirects to UVM Bookstore

We strongly recommend students purchase a 3-year AppleCare+ warranty with their Apple laptop. This will help to protect your laptop in case of failure/damage and most service can be performed on campus through the UVM Tech Team. AppleCare+ can be purchased through the UVM Bookstore.

Physics & Engineering

Due to our engineering courses utilizing more hardware intensive applications, the laptops we recommend to our engineers are more powerful so students can install and run those applications on their own laptop if they desire. We require a 15” screen for our engineering students, as it provides the best experience in our applications.

The computers we have identified that meets CEMS' requirements are a 15” Dell Precision Mobile Workstation or 16” MacBook Pro (please see notes about engineers using Macs below).

Dell Precision 5570
- 12th Generation Intel Core i7-12800H
- 16 GB Memory (RAM)
- 512 GB Solid State Drive (SSD)
- 1920x1200 Display
- NVIDIA RTX A1000 Graphics
- Windows 11 Pro

Purchase link, redirects to UVM Bookstore

This laptop is a higher end model with a dedicated graphics card. It will run our engineering applications with great performance through all 4 years of our engineering programs.

We strongly recommend students purchase a 4-year warranty plus accidental damage with their Dell laptop. This will help to protect your laptop in case of failure/damage and most service can be performed on campus through the UVM Tech Team.

Apple MacBook Pro 14”

While a Mac is an option for engineers at UVM, students need to be aware that they will not be able to run the majority of our engineering applications natively. This means students who bring a Mac to school will need to utilize our virtualized Windows environment to run those applications. This laptop is the Mac model we recommend due to screen size.

Apple MacBook Pro 14”
10-Core CPU
16-Core GPU
16GB Unified Memory
512GB SSD Storage

- 10-Core CPU
-16-Core GPU
-16GB Unified Memory
-512GB SSD Storage
-MacOS 12 (Monteray)

Purchase link, redirects to UVM Bookstore

We strongly recommend students purchase a 3-year AppleCare+ warranty with their Apple laptop. This will help to protect your laptop in case of failure/damage and most service can be performed on campus through the UVM Tech Team. AppleCare+ can be purchased through the UVM Bookstore.

Recommended Accessories

We strongly recommend our engineers also purchase the following accessories.
- Wireless/Bluetooth Mouse
- 24" Dell USB-C Monitor (P2419HC)

Previously Owned Computers

We understand that our incoming students may already own a laptop that may not meet our requirements. In order to support students who are enrolled in engineering courses who own a laptop that does not meet our recommended specifications or is a Mac, we offer a virtualized Windows environment with all our engineering apps installed on it.

If you own a laptop with a screen smaller than 15”, we strongly recommend purchasing a 24” or larger monitor you can connect to.

We do not support Chromebooks or iPads as a primary computer device. Students who own just a Chromebook or iPad will need to purchase a laptop that meets our requirements.