<p>If you are buying your daughter a new laptop, you should check out Best Buy online. You can get a $100 discount coupon by entering her Wellesley email. This will get a cheaper computer than buying it through the Wellesley/Apple website.</p>
<p>Otherwise, the prices in the Best Buy store are the same as with the Wellesley discount ($1299 for a MacBook Pro with the specs Wellesley recommends, not including the 4 year Apple care plan they also recommend.) </p>
<p>If anyone hears of better deals on the MacBook Pro, please post here. She desperately needs a new laptop!</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. Have you been able to find a four year version of AppleCare? We’ve had no luck with this.</p>
<p>We haven’t researched this ourselves yet, but the salesman at Best Buy told us it was possible, maybe from Apple directly? We’re holding off on buying the computer just to make sure this is the best price. It is shockingly expensive, and 8 GB is a lot of RAM to buy when we’re not even sure she needs it. What I do know is that she does need a new laptop (hers is 5 years old, ancient in laptop years, and very slow). </p>
<p>DH’s business partner also suggests getting a refurbished Mac, which is about the price of a PC, so we’re looking into that as well.</p>
<p>I was curious about the difference in pricing between the Best Buy offer and the Apple Store educational pricing since our DD will soon be in the market for a new laptop. On a 15" Macbook Pro (Retinal display), with 8GB RAM and all other specs the same, the Apple educational price was $1,999 vs. Best Buy’s price (with the add’l $100 coupon) was $1,944. However, Apple also adds a $100 App Store gift card when you buy any computer, so it looks like the Apple deal is a little better (at least for the computer we looked at).</p>