Since youre a student and not going to be playing a lot of games. Get the Air.
Absolutely, dont let the slim size of the Air fool you, its a full power Mac. Many people assume as much about the Air from its thin profile.
School use is the absolute perfect use for the Air over the macbook Pro,......SSD speed, fast boot and shutdown, only one moiving part.
The current Air is the fastest wifi Mac out there when hooked to an 802ac router
Ultralong battery life, cool running.
Lightweight to pack around campus.
Get the 8gig of RAM.
Here is an excellent video comparison between the 11” I5 vs. I7 2013 Macbook Air.
http://www.apple-tubes.com/apple-macbook-air-11-mid-2013-haswell-i5-vs-i7-compar ison/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7113/2013-macbook-air-core-i5-4250u-vs-core-i7-465 0u/2
I5 vs. I7 performance 13” Macbook Air 2013
Boot performance
11.7 I5 ……11.4 I7
Cinebench
1.1 I5….1.41 I7
IMovie Import and Opt.
6.69 I5….5.35 I7
IMovie Export
10.33 I5…8.20 I7
Final Cut Pro X
21.47 I5…17.71 I7
Adobe Lightroom 3 Export
25.8 I5….31.8 I7
Adobe Photoshop CS5 Performance
27.3 I5…22.6 I7
Macbook Air:
Only one moving part, ultrafast boot time SSD, the full power of laptop with the weight of an Ipad (close).
Air is the only Mac that has Haswell, 802ac wifi, and incredible 12hr. batt life in 13" I5.
Recommend buying the Air with 8gig Ram.
Pack around a regular laptop around about 20 days, then an Air, .....after that the standard laptops stays at home.
Only one moving part, the fan. No moving HD heads to crash or moving platters. Runs a LOT cooler than anything else out there (which = durability). Heater is a killer on a scale of 10X over that of accidents.
Also the AIR has far fewer parts to fail inside than a standard laptop. Really only a few replacement parts
The speakers on the Air, contrary to what most people would assume, are actually much louder than on the macbook Pro.
The Air in general is faster due to the SSD, also if you have a 802ac Router (i.e. Airport Extreme) then the Air over wifi is a LOT faster.
If youre going to be dragging a notebook around class all the time, the Air makes things a lot more lovely.
Important for a student is to get insurance against theft/ accidents / spills / loss