Choosing BETWEEN MacBook and Chromebook

if your school does not provide specific computer recommendations, then buy the cheapest Chromebook you can find.

Why buy the cheapest Chromebook? You’ll learn much about your needs. Assuming the Chromebook does’t get lost or damaged or stolen, then you’ll either like it, or you’ll decide that maybe paying more money is appropriate.

What computer equipment does your school recommend? Or require?

What equipment does your school IT and school instructors support?

That gear is usually the appropriate choice, unless you want to learn much more about your chosen platform, about the recommended platform(s), and cross-platform support, and all that on your own, with everything else that happens at school.

How long does this gear have to last? One year? Two? Four?

(Macs that can’t run the three most recent macOS versions are more work for some common apps, not the least of which are Microsoft apps, and Macs in that 2015 to 2017 range are already limited to macOS 12 or to macOS 13, depending on model. The most current Apple Xcode integrated development environment doesn’t work that far back, either. That all only gets to be more work over time, and that work when you need to focus on school.)

An eight to ten year old MacBook Pro USB-C Intel model wouldn’t be my preferred choice for a four year school. Particularly if the school supports Chromebooks or Windows PCs, and not Macs. But this is your choice.

If you pick the Mac, you’ll want a hard disk for backups.

If that $340 is $340 USD, it's not the sort of budget that would buy a new or Certified Refurbished MacBook. There may be a few Windows laptops in that price range, but they're going to be low-end ones which may make a lot of compromises. E.g.,

Dell – Inspiron 15 Laptop

The cheapest one is $280 and has 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. The screen has lower resolution than the MacBook Air's, the CPU has only about 1/3 of the speed of a plain M4, you can have a single external monitor which has a maximum resolution of 1920x1080, and so on. But maybe if you are just interested in doing schoolwork and in browsing the Web, you could live with compromises like these.

There may be other budget Windows laptops that would be better choices. If you are interested in budget Windows laptops, you need to do the research and the legwork, instead of expecting someone else to hunt one down for you.

There are ChromeBooks, but if you buy one of them, don't expect the same sort of desktop applications availability that you would have with Windows or with macOS.