I am a biology major and a freshman in college in need of a new computer.

To help you decide, I suggest that you do the following:

1. Review each app that will be critical for you to use in your studies and understand their minimum and recommended system requirements. Be sure to allow yourself some "growth" with those requirements.
2. From these requirements, you can review each of the Apple notebooks you would be interested to see if they meet those requirements. A good place to find out is: Tech Specs - Apple Support
3. Ask yourself, what is the most you are willing to pay? Up front or via payments. Apple does offer discounts for college students on select models so you should definitely take advantage of this. They also provide financing.

Tesserax has a logical response and approach, the software should drive the hardware.

Also look at this video

Which Mac to Buy in 2018? MacBook vs Air vs Pro! - YouTube

(it is about 8 months old, so remember that references to MB Pro would have to be updated)

Here is a link with a nice chart, current, per the link

Which MacBook Should You Buy? MacBook vs. Air vs. Pro

Whatever dollars you have allow, I suggest leaving some extra for a longer Apple Care agreement.

You will be a freshman at college 😁

Go for the surface pro. It has a touchscreen and a pencil on board. You can use it for note taking and marking up pdf's all in one device. I have an iPad pro with the pencil and it works great but not near enough power. I also have the MBP touch bar 2016 which is a big fail and a huge waste of money if we want to be honest about it. Old hardware and not a pro machine. I just can't see where you could go wrong with the surface for school. I've had the MBP for a year and have about an hour of battery life until needs to be plugged in a blinking screen with scratches from the keyboard on it.

Have fun choosing a notebook! I'm sure you won't be disappointed with either choice ... and best of luck in your biology studies.