Need help for school laptop

I am a full time university student, at the Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. I am studying Accounting Science, working towards being a Chartered Accountant. I have a student loan to pay for my fees and other uni related expenses.

A lot of information and work is communicated online so a laptop for a uni student is a necessity. I have not owned one since I started uni and find it hard at times to be a computer labs as they are forever full and sometimes won't even find a free computer to work on. It makes it harder to do research, complete projects and assignments or even check emails. A smartphone has saved me but it doesn't help that much when I need to type up projects and papers.

I would like to buy a laptop as it would make it a lot easier to work. Finding a job would be hard as I'm a full time student, so I would appreciate all the help I could get from anybody.