@LandMass-I have the same question you have.I am going to start M.arch this fall too. they said purchasing the laptop is mandatory but I really think such laptops that can handle our needs will be so heavy and it is not practical to move them back to where you live.
btw: Do you plan to live on campus or not?I am trying to decide whether I should rent a studio near pratt or live in the grad dorms(willoughby and grand ave)
I appreciate any advice.

You are going to want mobility.

What about laptops don't you like? If it is the small keyboard/ monitor, you may be better off just getting a laptop with a video output and picking up an extra monitor, keyboard, and mouse if you find it makes your production work more efficient.

@hagaandaz- they say the laptop is mandatory that is why we are asking.A desktop is absolutely better faster and costs less, and a 17inch laptop is hardly movable.

Who renders on a laptop?

If Pratt doesn't have a render farm or desktops to use in a lab that you can lock for rendering, then you should build (do not buy) yourself a barebones desktop built for speed and rendering. But I would still get a laptop for day to day use.

I suppose I am spoiled in that I always had both a MBP and a desktop PC, for this very reason. I used my laptop for day-to-day work (85-90% of the semester duration) and desktop for production renderings.

I took a studio abroad and bringing a desktop with me was not in the picture.

pratt "says" a lot of things and they can and always will be changed. a desktop should be fine if thats what you want. few people at pratt do the desktop thing, but i have seen it in many other schools. also a laptop with with a nice monitor and keyboard to leave in studio is a nice idea. i doubt you will need a laptop to bring to 98% of classes, but it could come up. could be useful to have one for presentations when you need to project (which will be most of them), but i guess you could always borrow one.

last tip, dont stay in willoughby

@pigeon - So you say no to willoughby, what about the grand ave. dorm for graduates?

You can get a Core i5 laptop for less than 500 dollars on TigerDirect or NewEgg. Hell, I have an i7 that I got for $799 when my Macbook Pro broke (Apple is for people who like shiny things with little functionality/crappy per dollar performance).

Spend your money on one of those i5's, and it should be enough to model but not too great at rendering (I actually code rhinopython stuff during my lunch breaks on an Atom netbook with little performance issues, and an i5 destroys that processor). So yeah, aim at getting a laptop that has a discrete gfx card. don't get a sandy bridge machine yet.
Then spend $1000 on a desktop. Get something like a yorkfield (my q9550 from 3 years ago is still sexy), an i7 or even a hex-core amd processor, and figure out how to use maxwell render nodes. Hook them up together when you need to do really long renders. build it. it will take you (with zero experience) at most a day's work (it took me 2.5 hours to assemble and boot to windows 7 rc1 when i made mine).
For those $1500, you'll have just as much mobility as all the apple fanboi's you'll meet in school, and about twice the rendering capabilities.
Also, get an nvidia card on the desktop if you think you'll be into using octane. I have yet to try it on either of my cuda-enabled laptops, but I've heard good things (I still swear by my ATI card on my desktop though, but that's mostly for gaming).

I'm somewhat in the same boat as you guys. I'll be starting Pratt's M.Arch 1 program this fall too and I built my own desktop. I took a few classes at Columbia last semester and realized that without a desktop at home I would practically be living at school just trying to get my work done. I have a Dell XPS thats about 4 years old now and it still works well with Rhino and 3d's Max. I definitely think the "ok" laptop and a fairly good desktop combo would be ideal. I spent roughly 1,400 on my desktop but I also plan on overclocking it so the parts I bought are overkill for what we need.

@orgufiel - Haha I got the dell xps you got too, and I have a quad core at home thats working perfect.But It seems that they really want us to get a powerful laptop. Hope we can get someone that is attending pratt right now to get some info.

Anyone know how strictly the "required laptop" is enforced. Pratt requires a dell m4700. I am leaning toward the Lenovo w530 though, any current students know if this is an option?

You will be doing WORK with your computer: Acad, Revit etc. etc.

A whole generation has sprung up who only know computers as entertainment devices. The hardware requirements of Revit alone demand a desktop. If you try a rendering on a minimum laptop, it could run for DAYS!!!! That is not an exaggeration.

BTW. I am a Pratt graduate. Good luck. And don't start any fires :-))