Laptop Policy

Starting in the 2012-13 academic year the School recommended that all SPH students, graduate as well as undergraduate, own a laptop that meets campus minimum requirements*. Beginning in academic year 2013-14, owning a laptop is required for graduate as well as undergraduate SPH students. The university provides 24/7 computer support as well as on-site computer repair for PC and Mac computers purchased through the campus CCI program.  Our faculty members increasingly are incorporating a wide variety of computer-based technologies into course content.  Some courses include presentations on student laptops, use of laptops for taking notes or accessing the web, and use of social media tools, polling tools or other course-specific software during class.  Students also use laptops for sharing group projects and other assignments. In short, laptops have become essential tools for 21st century students.

* The specifications listed in this link are minimum requirements.  For the Department of Epidemiology, we encourage incoming students to upgrade, if possible, the processor, memory, and hard drive capacity (in that order) at the time of purchase. This should provide more assurance that your system will handle computation and data analysis requirements throughout the program.

If you intend to run SAS (required for our courses) on your laptop you must have a Professional or higher version of Microsoft Windows.  SAS will not install on a Home Edition Windows operating system.

For students interested in Mac laptop options, please use the configurations of the current MacBook Pro models as guidelines for recommended specifications.  Current models available through CCI are found here: CCI Laptops

SAS for Mac users:  SAS is only compatible with a Windows operating system (Professional or higher).  A dual-boot system (BootCamp) or VM software is required for Mac users installing SAS.  The Windows operating system is available to students through campus IT services.