As someone who just graduated from a college that taught us on macs exclusively and used a combination of a basic Dell laptop and my custom PC , you will most likely be fine not getting a Mac . You would not be required , but its usually recommended by schools since it might be easier for some students . Most schools are switching to Adobe or AVID if they have not been using this already and away from Final Cut Pro . Both AVID and Adobe Premiere are available on Windows . Im not 100 % sure about AVID , but with Premiere , if you have all your files on an external drive and work off that , you can start on a Mac in class and then go home and finish it off on your PC with no issues I did this very often . Depending on the specs of your current computer , you might be fine as is without a Mac . If you need to upgrade and are dead set on a Macbook pro , try and get the 2015 15 model with 16 gb ram . You will most likely run into port issues and need a ton of dongles for the 2016 model since most external drives still use standard USB ports rather than USB CThunderbolt 3 . Dont get the 13 since those are dualcore only and are not very efficient for editing .