I’m a senior chemical engineering student so I don’t know exactly what you’ll be using in school. I’m sure you’ll use a CAD program at some point but beyond that I don’t know.
I never needed to use anything my laptop couldn’t use. (a thinkpad T420 with 4gb ram and 2nd gen i5 from 2011). Most of my homework could be done by hand or with Excel and sometimes MATLAB. The only thing I wish I had at home was an external monitor, it’s a pain to try and have a paper and spreadsheet open on a small screen. If you’re in dorms there is probably a computer lab very close by if you need one.
The programs that would have been computer-intensive like simulation software were only available on campus computers. Plus I had to be on campus anyways if I was meeting with a group to work on something.
So a laptop should be fine, unless you live far from campus/hate using the campus computers. $150 for 8gb ram is a lot, you should be able to find some much cheaper and it’s easy to install.