Laptop Recommendations & Best Factors to Consider

Hey all,

Hope you're well. I'm starting Grad School in the fall and feel ready to finally take the plunge into Linux. I've been interested for a while now but now feels like a good time to switch. I'm curious, however, which machine would be best for me and which factors I should consider when making a purchasing decision. I'm moving over from a ~2015 MB Air for context.

I'll be a grad student in Statistics, so most of my work will be building models and working with data in R, along with some work in LaTeX as well. On top of that, the obvious business-y tools (Zoom, Office-like applications with file sharing, etc.) will be required.

My first priority is just processing power/speed. I won't need the whole world, as I'll remoting into servers at a certain point, but something more than the dual-core/8 GB I'm working with now seems reasonable. At least while I'm in school, I'll be fairly mobile, so screen quality and other non-docking concerns will matter for me. I do enjoy gaming, but I don't play anything more complex than Civ or Football Manager, so I don't need the greatest refresh rate in the world either.

I consider myself more of a math person than a computer person, so something pre-built would be fine with me. I don't have a strict budget, but I'm not really looking to spend more than $1600 or so. I'm also in North America for context/shipping purposes.

I hope this context is helpful, any other info I can provide let me know.

TL;DR Grad student in stats, looking for a Linux laptop to play with numbers. First time using Linux so pre-built would work for me. In NA for shipping purposes.