Got a daughter that will be a freshman next year at A&M. What would be the best electronics package to have built out for her HS graduation gift from family? She has to give her HS iPad back upon graduation and we are trying to figure out if she will need one for college. Or would a windows 180 degree laptop with touchscreen/digital pen suffice?

If you were going into your freshman year...what would you want/need? I'll add, she is not in a graphic or processor heavy major so a "powerful" laptop is not needed.

If she's on the apple ecosystem and likes them, she should check out an iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard.

I don't mess with apple, but my wife works in education and had a MacBook pro, but I recently (over several months) got her an 11 inch iPad Pro, an apple pen, and a magic keyboard and it feels just like a high performing laptop.

Also, if you are looking for a "180" laptop, i think when you are doing research it would help out if you were searching for a "2-in-1" laptop (folds back all the way to be a "tablet", or is just a "normal laptop".)

I used to develop and sell those and didnt think they were that great. Get your daughter to go try both of them out and see what you think. There's basically just a good-better-best strategy as far as performance goes price-wise. Really the one thing you want to make sure she's happy with is the use-case, touch-and-feel, use case, and support -- and that tends to differ with different brands.

Big monitor and an ergonomic keyboard which can connect to whatever she has?

I have a freshman this year and he really likes using the Ipad Air with Apple Pencil Pro. I wasn't sure how much he would use it since he also needed a laptop (per engineering requirements). But he says he uses both in different ways but uses the Ipad more and really digs some of the features the pencil enables for him.