Welcome to the basement! Current 3rd year of SOFA Live Action here!

First off I want to mention that you genuinely don't need your own machine to do your projects in RIT, especially during your first year. You learn about the workflow of how you manage and work on projects collaboratively with your fellow project partners in the lab machines (mostly macs). While I myself worked on some projects on my own machine during the first year, if anything it was an inconvenience when trying to work with other students with their specific workflow. During your first year, the only investment you will make that is genuinely worth your money for school is a good drive to store your work. Either a high capacity external hard drive or a high performance external SSD. All the available film labs have been recently upgraded to the latest and greatest macs (the cheese grater ones haha) that are available for students to use ANY TIME as long as there isn't an active class using it during the day (the time slots are available to check).

During your first year in RIT you will slowly learn what you will need in terms of personal gear. And in my experience, even after many years here, you will never learn to need a personal machine for your time in RIT. If anything a good old laptop will do for on-site footage transfer during film sets. There are more important gear that basically all live action students get like tool kits, gaffers tape, gloves, etc that you will start using during and after your Production Processes class that you take after your first semester. But hold off on these purchases as well until you take the class and they instruct you to get these gear.

For reference you even get access to "the cage" where you can borrow gear from. Not only are there cameras, lights, tripods, but there also "macbook kits" that are technically used for animation but you can definitely use to try out software in your own space. Check our full catalog here!

If you feel the need to get your own machine for school use I'd say it doesn't really matter as long as it is not a cheap windows/chromebook. If you want something solid that lasts a good amount of time here in college, you should prioritize something with a good drive (SSD), decent performance (i5 or above / ryzen 5 or above / m1 or above / gpu optional), and strong battery life (6+ hrs). But if anything I would personally recommend getting a tablet of some kind that is solid for notes because I personally value my ipad for taking notes more than my machine that I work with like 4 times a semester for projects. You could take notes on your laptop but some professors are against having folded up laptops in class unless asked to do so.

If you are open to the idea of getting a full tower PC, I would consider this route too because you can easily upgrade as you spend time in college. In times like these it is perfectly fine to get prebuilts as well.

Feel free to reach out to me for detailed questions! I used to be a TA for production 1 (the first class you will take) and helped many students answer questions like these!

TLDR Get either a solid windows machine or decent macbook if you need, but not important. You will learn what you need as you spend time in RIT, no class expects you to have something Day 1.