How was your experience using Linux in college?

LibreOffice has opened every DOC(X) the school has sent me, albeit imperfectly, and all assignments are turned in as PDFs, which I usually make using Markdown and LaTeX. I have had to use Office 365 for collaboration, but only about twice a year, and that runs very smoothly in Firefox. On one occasion I tried to collaborate with CryptPad, but it didn't work as well as I hoped.
Most computer labs at my uni run Windows 10, rarely 11, but a lot of the science labs run Linux. A surprising amount of the software required for classes has been open-source, too.
The most frustrating thing has been the lockdown browser used for some exams. My university library has computers I can borrow for exams, but yours might not, and they detect VMs, so you might have to dual boot for that.
- Oh yeah, I didn't think of the lockdown browser. I'm in Sweden, so I should only hope our education has come so far that I'll be able to borrow a spare Windows computer.
  
  If my American university has a system in place for students that don't own Windows, I would not be surprised if yours has a better one :)
  
  If computer has a removable drive you could just get a second drive and run windows on that if you really need to for some reason

I've been using exclusively Linux since high school, and now I'm doing a PhD in math. It's always been pretty smooth. I used to have a separate Windows rig for gaming, but don't really need it anymore, now that Proton works very well with most games. (I don't really play AAA games, so that helps.)
Coming to the point, for academic stuff, I mostly needed to use a PDF reader (Zathura and qPdfView), LaTeX, and some computation and graphing software (mostly SageMath). I sometimes needed to use DOCX files, but LibreOffice works well for that. Most other software I need from time to time are usually Linux native.
Also, many universities provide access to O365. I've used it in some rare cases where I needed to provide input in some collaborative document. But in most cases, I was able to convince my friends/colleagues to use Google Docs instead.
Unless you do CAD, or some creative work, Linux should be perfect for your usecase.
- I had a Maths Prof who used Mint so this kinda checks out
- FreeCAD should be fine too.
  
  Blender and openscad works great also
- I'm surprised you use Google. I would assume people on Linux are avoiding big tech as much as possible. I personally don't use a Google account so I just use the o365 school account to edit collab documents
  
  I dislike both. But since Google Docs is free, it's easier to use everywhere and with all kinds of groups.

In comp sci our labs ran fedora and I didn't even know what Linux was I just laughed at the computer saying fedora. I thought I was on Mac tbh.

Storytime!
As a physics major, daily driving Linux worked out pretty smoothly. The thing that saved me from trouble the most was making a weekly full system backup (I used Clonezilla and my file server). If anything was truly incompatible, I took care of it on the school's computers.
In my second semester, I began dual-booting on my X201 Tablet and desktop, eventually booting into Windows infrequently enough that I made my X201T Linux-only by the end of my second year.
Around that point, I began using LUKS full-disk encryption on my machines and USB drives. I highly recommend if you don't already, even if just for peace of mind. I have strong ideas about the way things ought to look and work, so being able to customize Linux to my heart's content (with Chicago95 ofc) made doing work on my computer a bit more enjoyable.
Documents
MS Office: Libreoffice worked 95% of the time. For the other 5%, I used the school computers or my Windows VM.
Google Docs and GMail: accessed through Chromium, which I only used to access Google and sites linked to my school's SSO system.
We did a lot of writing in Latex, though it might be a physics thing
A lot of other small stuff I'm starting to forget, but if I don't mention it, I probably did it through the browser.
Lab
MATLAB: GNU Octave sufficed 75% of the time, often needing just slight changes to the code. Otherwise I used the lab computers or my desktop with actual MATLAB.
Proprietary dana analysis software: One had a .deb package for oldoldoldstable so I set up a VM just for that. Otherwise, lab computers it was.
Lab computers running old and new versions of Windows were available to us, so if there was anything computationally intensive or requiring proprietary software, I would just take care of it in the lab.
Social
Slack, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp: browser client, which I would check on a schedule
Tools
VPN: NetworkManager, though it was a bit janky. I think it's a lot better nowadays.
Printing: We had a web print portal to upload docs and pdfs to a printer of our choice.
Graphics
Mostly prepared my posters, etc in a mix of Libreoffice Draw, GIMP, and Inkscape
Adobe: Had to use it on one occasion. Used the library computers where it was installed for everyone to use.
Digital notes: I would use Xournal on my X201 Tablet whenever I forgot to bring my notebook or refill my fountain pen. Managed to impress a few of my iPad-toting classmates when I whipped out the pen and the display around on what they believed to be an ancient clunker.
As for the desktop, I had purchased it with gaming in mind, but it eventually became my SMB file share, media server, and RDP session host so I could make any library desktop like my own. Each thing in its own VM, of course. By the end of it, I was one of about 3 students running a server over the campus LAN. Even in the comp sci department, surprisingly few students used Linux.
Linux also met all of my computing needs while studying abroad in Germany. For five whole months, I had not used Windows once. Though my SSD did give out on me once, a backup saved the day.
A friend once did need to use a rather invasive remote proctoring tool. Highly recommend a separate laptop or at least a fresh SSD for this case.
Mobile privacy, if it's relevant
I was in the fortunate position where none of my classes or jobs required proprietary mobile apps
Friends used Venmo or whatever else, I paid back in cash
SMS and emails sufficed for regular communication
Overall, it was smooth sailing using Linux throughout my college years and no incompatibilities that couldn't be solved in the library or a computer lab.
edit: i used debian btw
- Hello fellow physics student

Well, I'm a psychologist and my entire college time I used Linux. Most of the times me and my friends used Google Docs instead of MS Office
In psychologist school you'll be reading a lot, so you'll need pdf reader, but that is easy in Linux. Maybe, but this is a big maybe, you'll learn about statistics using a software, but we have Jamovi and JASP for that. If you're into R or Python, that's easier in Linux then Windows
If you really need to share documents with your friends using MS Office, LibreOffice may do the job for the content, but have in mind that if you're in charge of formatting the document, noone else could do it. Otherwise, if other person is in charge, you'll be better not try to format. Or just use Google Docs / Office 365 (online)
In my own experience, I had no issue using only Linux in my school time
Also, in my daily work as a psychologist, I have no issue with that as well

I used UNIX on a greenscreen terminal at university before Windows was even released. There were no compatibility problems because nobody used computers outside of CS departments. And now get off my lawn, damn kids!

Computer Science graduate here
It's great, and in fact the recommended setup. We even had a lab running Ubuntu, managed by a bunch of volunteers that pass down sysadmin knowledge.
There was this one class, tho, that required MS Visual C++ 2008. There was no way around it, so what I did was I installed Windows on VM.
Office document support was janky with LibreOffice but it got the job done for me. They seem to have improved a lot recently, so you probably won't have issue.
Even up to today, I never felt the need to have Windows. Some proprietary softwares like Zoom are available thru Flatpak while the Windows-only ones like Adobe Acrobat can be installed thru Wine.
The only times I had to have Windows was to play certain video games. In general, I could live without them, as most video games are playable on Linux with Wine (thanks, Steam!), while some others provide Linux native port.

Just finished my Master's this year.
I belonged to the Department of Computer Science at a university in the UK so granted there's a lot of bias here:
I will point out a few observations, without going into much detail or reasoning:
Microsoft's Office suite was a non-requirement. For collaboration, everyone was using Google's Office suite (Google Docs, Sheets) or Overleaf (Premium if we signed up with our university email).
Around half (maybe more) were MacOS users, maybe 25-25% split between Linux and Windows.
Lots of iPads, particularly in any Maths classes.
Anything else to keep in mind? Yes, that people are ignorant. Even in our CS department people used to actively avoid using Linux, a lot of people will buy Macbooks because of reasons I would attribute more to the demographics of CS students, i.e. primarily from Asian countries where Apple is seen as a economic symbol.
Be prepared for people to judge you (not saying they should, but that they likely will). If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something. However, I commend you for going out of your way to learn and wanting to reduce your dependency on Windows. I think that learning to be comfortable with the machine will help you in the future, most likely indirectly.
Lastly, keep in mind that when we have discussions about privacy or Linux or not supporting big tech companies who we might not agree with (e.g. Microsoft, Google, Apple etc) it's never a binary problem. You might find that you will end up relying on teams for internal communication or that your university email is with outlook/office365.
Try and do your bit, but don't be too harsh on yourself. :)
Needless to say, if you're looking for a laptop that runs Linux well plenty of people will tell you to buy a used thinkpad (great from a value perspective), or if you'd prefer some of the new kidz stuff then a Tuxedo notebook.
Do not make the mistake of buying a notebook which doesn't have a reputation of good Linux support. I bought a HP notebook (can't quite remember the model number right now but can get back to you) and still no sound without manual kernel module patch :D
- If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something...
  Or save a few bucks, buy whatever laptop in silver, cover the logo with a sticker, and use elementaryOS or theme your DE to be Mac-like.
  (Great advice, btw)
- If you want to avoid this judgement, get an Apple silicon Macbook Air or something...
  Damn, me over here trying to flex my Chicago95-ass X201T to my classmates
- If you want to avoid this judgement (being a Linux user)
  We're here, we're queer, Linux is top gear!

College the art dept ran Macintosh OS X while computer science ran Solaris & Windows (outside of C# this didn’t matter). I had a OS X/Windows dual boot laptop at the time as well as a Windows/Linux (Crunchbang) desktop which let me accomplish everything. Adobe products were pretty easy to pirate at the time, & I was intially annoyed WINE didn’t really work with them, but I worked slowly towards getting skills in the FOSS tools & when Adobe moved to a cloud subscription model I said “fuck ’em”. The tools are certanily good enough if not better if you learn them. The CS stuff was much easier with Linux to get compilers & whatnot. OpenOffice was fine for everything else. Professors were never asshats & cared that you completed the assignment rather than what specific tool for file format you were using so long as there was something they could easily view (such as PDF). If I really needed some dumb app, I could just use the computer lab. I carried around a stateful distro on a USB as well so I could get around the opposite issue of not having my Linux tools at say the library that was all Microsoft.
Outside of classwork, Pidgin+libpurple & a browser covered my use cases.

I'm doing a CIS degree right now, and I did 99% of my first year on fedora. I did need a full windows install because some exams took place using a lock down software.
Honestly, the hardest part was remembering to boot into windows the day before so it could update and stabilize for the exam the next day

Linux didn't exist when I was in college but I did work on it's predecessor Minix in Op Systems class in '89
- VAX VMS was the bomb.

I used nothing but Linux for my Master's and am currently using it for my doctorate. I've been full-time on Linux for over 10 years.
I did find that OnlyOffice played better with MS Office than LibreOffice. I also use the school's Office 365 that they provided me to open my finished files in the web version to verify the formatting matched. There was only one time it didn't.

I was forced to. I had no money and needed a PC for my studies.
A roommate gifted me his old desktop with OpenSUSE.
For at least 2 days I googled various forms of "how to install programs on Linux" and got more and more frustrated, cause all I found was stuff you had to compile yourself, or things called "packages". But I didn't want "packages", I wanted programs.
On the third day I found the YaST package manager and was immediately blown away by the fact you could search, download and install everything you need without hunting it down on various websites.
That was 20 years ago. Been on Linux ever since.
- 😄I don't want packages I want programs. That's like a Mac user saying I don't want programs I want applications. Booting up a Mac and saying where's my god dam exe, why doesn't anything work.
  No offense it's just funny.

My university mainly ran Solaris, pretty much everything also ran on Linux. In the rare case where Windows was required a remote desktop was available.
My university probably isn't your university though, so answers may not be worth much...

I login to the student outlook email on the web and use OnlyOffice with Microsoft fonts installed. Presentations and Documents work as needed. I got a fellow student to switch to Linux and he's had no issues either.

I'm currently using Arch Linux in college and my advice will be to dual boot. In some lower div classes my specific professor wanted Visual Studio .sln files so there was no other way (I guess you could VM it but I'm not trusting that with my grade).
Group sharing documents, our schools and most schools are in the MS ecosystem so you can edit on word online through the onedrive thing.
For writing stuff I would mostly use libreoffice with the LanguageTool plugin installed.
For lockdown proctored exams, I would typically get a loaner laptop from school because no way am I downloading their sussy stuff.
Edit: Since you're studying to be a psychologist, my first paragraph will probably not apply to you. If you want to, dual boot, if not, I think maybe you could boot up a vm if there's some really niche use cases.

using google's office tools is going to be pretty generally acceptable for most people. depending on your studies, you might be expected to use windows software at some point. i would recommend dual booting. depending on your computing hardware, buying a relatively cheap 1 TB SSD from any retailer and installing windows on it is usually the best option. should simply be a matter of selecting the correct boot device from your system bios. for psychologists, my supposition would be that any proprietary software used, if any, would be windows exclusive.
- Honestly I did look into dual booting some time ago, but I don't think (and this is just a guess) that I'll be that dependent on Windows for my studies, and it feels a bit icky to have a secondary OS that I'll barely use (just like me having Play Store on my GOS phone). :')
  
  If you're ever forced to use windows for whatever reason, your college should have computers in a library or something that you could use. As far as office software compatibility goes, the office documents themselves are likely to show up with formatting errors if opened in another office suite, but there's no such issue if you export to PDF though, so I always did my work in LibreOffice and then turned in a PDF and there were never any issues. For group work, I always found it easier to just use one of the browser-based office suites for file compatibility or for working on the same document together.

I was doing computer science and we were asked or recommended to use the following pieces of software:
Citrix Workspace App, which has a native Linux version.
Docker, which has a native Linux version.
Google Chrome, which has a native Linux version, but I chose to use Firefox anyway.
Laragon, which doesn't have a Linux version, so I just used XAMPP instead.
Microsoft Excel, which doesn't have a Linux version. The school offered an Office 365 license, so I could've used the web version, but I chose to use LibreOffice Calc instead.
MySQL Workbench, which has a native Linux version.
Open ModelSphere, which has a native Linux version.
Packet Tracer, which has a native Linux version.
Slack, which has a native Linux version.
VirtualBox, which has a native Linux version.
Didn't really have any problems using Linux. Might be different if you need other software, tho.

wdym by college? the same word means a lot of different things in different places
- College / university, the thing right after highschool.

Honestly, if you're sharing office files you're probably using office 365. This means everything is a web app first and therefore Linux compatible.
I tried using the desktop version of word on a Mac last week, and the latency was so bad on a shared document that I had to switch to the web app anyway.
Basically, if you just want to use Linux you'll be fine. If instead you don't want to use Microsoft, you'll probably have lots of problems.
Microsoft have been brutally effective in getting their tentacles into academic institutes, and you'll find that everything from email to logging into internal sites relies on an office 365 account.

I had a cis major and I didn't have issues using Linux all that often. One class we had to write code in VisualStudio, before the Linux version existed. My professor was fine with me using my own IDE as long as the code compiled on Windows, which it did after adding about 3 lines of code to the start.
If we had shared documents they went in Google docs, and libre office, (open office at the time) docs were exported as PDF before submitting. I also had a Windows 10 VM ready to go just in case, but rarely used it.

Only thing to add to what has already been said: Office related stuff will be your biggest issue. Personally I suffer a lot with the web version of the Office apps, so I recommend dual boot or VM for when using office.

I study computer science and it's definitely been an advantage. That being said, I believe circumstances might wary between institutions, countries, subjects and teachers a lot.
For documents, when we have a group task, we just use collaboration platforms online, like Google docs. Gets the job done easily.
When you're alone, using free stuff shouldn't be a problem.
A little advice: don't bother with latex and use typst instead. Latex works but it's often weird and the error messages are hidden in a thousand lines of "unfull hbox"

Software engineering student here. Well we had a course about Microsoft excel but i used Libreoffice and almost got a full mark. There were no problem with lessons like Advanced programming (C#) and Data structure (C and C++) and few others with languages like python and php. There has been few courses that requires softwares that are not available on linux(Cisco packet tracer and Proteus) but wine solved the problem perfectly. Back in high school i even managed to run Visual Studio but it was hard tbh. I don't know about what they teach on the other countries colleges but i think you should mostly be fine with linux and wine.

Studying mechanical engineering at a university in Europe at the moment and using Linux exclusively on my main laptop for a few years now. Mostly it's totally fine since I almost always work with PDF documents while studying and when working in groups we always use something cloud based (Office365) to enable simulataneous editing anyway so no problem there.
However recently we had had to use a program to get bonus points that only runs on Windows and not even inside a virtual machine. Also CAD software is essentially Windows only (I got by using Fusion360 online but it's much slower than the native app).
So I guess you should be fine, especially since some university/college staff are also Linux enthusiasts but it will probably vary wildly based on where you're studying.

It was great with my CS program. The only issues I had were due to me using some tiling WM so it was harder to make HDMI work for presentations, and then when I switched from Arch to NixOS it was too much of hassle... so should have been way smoother just staying on Arch

I used linux all through the years I should have been in college, but was instead a hopeless drug addict. I regret nothing!!!
...apart from the drugs....
...and not going to college...

Linux was just being invented when I was in college... But if your profs want certain files traded as MS documents Windows will make your life easier. While docx is opened/saved by LibreOffice etc, there are formatting things that can trip you up like default margins, missing fonts (on either end of use) this means what you send somebody may not open and look as intended (even if the issue is actually on the MS user end). It makes things frustrating unless they only want pdf. Also powerpoints get wonky too.
- Turning in a docx is very bad practice. It is best to convert to PDF for both security and compatibility. Docx are never going to render properly in the browser.
  
  Many of the online dropboxes for assignments render docx (and pdf files) and many instructors will want the docx for the metadata display (ie author, time taken to complete assignment, etc).

We installed Slackware. One kid bet me that Linux wouldn't let him drag his entire drive into the bin to delete. It did, and we all laughed, including the professor - who still gave him the passing grade since he'd seen enough of it working before it went up in flames.

The people I know in my program (undergrad History) use their computers for little more than Google Chrome (specifically Google’s Office suite), a PDF reader (sometimes also Google Chrome), sometimes Zotero, and sometimes MS Word. We get a lot of Mac’s around here, so one can imagine Microsoft products are not highly relied upon, generally speaking.
Everything’s through the browser nowadays, so I’d say just pick a stable distro, install 2 or three browsers in case something doesn’t work (like Google Docs with Firefox in my experience…), and submit everything as PDF.
Can’t speak much to LibreOffice as I write my papers in Typst (and before that in LaTeX, which got me brownie points with some of the older professors), which I find much faster, easier, and more flexible than WYSIWYG word processors.

Funny enough, my college pushed me to a Linux dual boot.
One of my classes required an Ubuntu environment for C++ programming, and after trying and failing to get WSL working, I decided to just dual boot (from 2 separate SSDs) instead of trying to work around the limitations of a VM.
On the other hand, 2 of my other classes required a Windows-only program.
I used to default to Windows, but after the BS from Microsoft this year I switched to defaulting to Ubuntu.

Studied languages at a university in Sweden, using only libre programs, except for one group assignment where we used Google docs. Nothing terribly interesting (computer-wise). Everything worked. Professors wanted .docx files, which LibreOffice happily exported. If I was so inclined, nothing would've stopped me from using something like OpenBSD, or hell, even Haiku would probably work.

I had no problem, but my classmates hated me because everytime a professor gave us an assignment to be done in excel I asked that if it was ok to use livreoffice because I use Linux and they always changed it to be done on R or Python.
- Couldn't you just save in the excel format?

It went great. I mostly had to submit files in PDF, which allowed any office software to work perfectly.
That is until covid came around and I had to do proctored online exams. The proctoring software doesn't support linux.

I would use OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice since it has better overall compatibility with MS Office and overall better UX.

For what is worth, I've had better luck on MSOffice integration with onlyoffice, but ymmv
- I've actually not researched that much about OnlyOffice but I'll definitely be sure to do that.
- +1 on OnlyOffice, it has 1:1 formatting compatibility with Microsoft Office. Unlike LibreOffice, it doesn't have to translate documents between odt and docx in the background.
  In the same vein, OnlyOffice has poor compatibility with odt files etc.
  
  I've definitely notice weirdness with odt files, but truth be told I damn never run into those, everything is xlsx, docx, etc as I'm interfacing with companies that are firmly MS, but they're also none the wiser usually. Every now and again there'll be a formatting issue, especially with Excel, but it isn't too common thankfully.

It was good! I really enjoyed it

Currently in college. They are agnostic as it's all turned in on PDF files, quizzes on browser, etc but my online classes require I install some root kit program to make sure I'm not cheating and it detects if it's on a VM. I talked to IT and they let me borrow a laptop with windows. Slow as hell, but I only need it for the online tests so 4 times a semester.

It didn't exist!

2001-2005. My computer lab in the school of math and natural sciences (including computer science), had windows 2000 (best windows of all time), Apple Power PCs, and all dual booted linux. All we used for comp sci was linux. Yellowdog on the Power PCs. Learned to program/develop in C++ and Java, mostly used e-macs, goal was to never lift hands from the keyboard or use the mouse, keeps you in the zone. Used Gnome as the desk top environment back then.
So pretty good :)
Today I use linux mint with cinamon for day to day computing, been using it for about 10 years now without issue.
I went back to college for a professional program, and used linux mint in 2022, it worked out just fine. As far as office software, I used word 365 online through the university web portal.
I think word sucks a lot and 2003 and 2007 are the best versions and little improvement since then (improvement is efficiency and easy of creating an end-product), but I'm not willing to re-learn how to master Libre Office, I just can't be bothered. So no input on that.

I switched to Linux while going back to school in 2014.
My calculus class had one of those "buy the $80 textbook to get the code for the online assignments" things which didn't want to work in Linux. I think the URL had something to do with Wolfram. Figures. Side question: Do they still give out copies of Mathematica to Raspberry Pi owners?
Turns out English professors can't tell the difference between Times New Roman and Liberation Sans.
Writing papers in LibreOffice Writer isn't a problem, it works fine for that. My professors tended to want them printed out and turned in on paper, so they had no clue what software made it. Printing to PDF works perfectly well too; if they specifically want a .docx file you'll probably survive. I would probably recommend OnlyOffice over LibreOffice for MS Office compatibility, but an MLA formatted school essay should survive that conversion.
The least plausible thing was working with other students on PowerPoint presentations. LibreOffice Impress works well enough, you can put words and pictures on slides, but its compatibility with PowerPoint just ain't there. "Let's each make five slides." maybe if you work with a blank template first, collect them all together, then apply a style.

Ex CS student. I'm on 100 % Linux, even back then.
Huge advantage in the Linux/Unix, networking labs.
The main issues were Matlab (Octave is kinda ok, but must be tested before you submit your project),
FPGA simulator - Altera (no alternatives, but it can be run on a Windows VM),
3ds Max - must be run on bare-metal Windows (maybe GPU passthrough to a VM will work),
some old weird software,
C getch() on Linux.
No problems with MS Office, I can run whatever I want, just exported it to the PDF.
No heavy formatting in drafts helps with a group project.
- Not really :)) https://gist.github.com/ninovsnino/f910701ea912f03b73a1d0895d213b0e
  
  MATLAB works fine on linux for me these days. Some weird small text on hiDPI screens, but its fixable. I've only tested on Debian based distros though.

Used it for physics stuff

Mainly only with my PS2.

I'm a bit like you! I'm studying to become a High School science teacher, so I'm not in a technical program. My computer serves mostly as a typing machine. I switched 2 years ago and it wasn't all smooth, but I'll share some of the things I encountered and what I did.
First problem I had, cloud sync. I used to be a a big OneDrive user and I wanted to sync everything with my drive as I used to be. There isn't a very good program for syncing OneDrive. I bought a licence to InSync and it made it work flawlessly. Seriously good software! (nowadays I host my own Nextcloud server, but don't start with that, it's a lot of job for not a whole lot).
Second problem was getting used to LibreOffice. Compared to Office, LO isn't formated around pages, every text you write is considered "one big text" and then it calculates where to put its page breaks and everything. What does it change? Not a whole lot, but technically speaking, it's not as good as a formatting tool as Word is. Doesn't really matter if you aren't a formatting freak like I am, but it took me a some time to get use to it. To get better with it, I recommend you to practice styles on it (text style and page style).
Third problem, collaboration. I didn't find a very good solution to it. What I do is I ask all my colleagues to write their parts online (Google Docs, MS Office Online,...) then once everything is done and perfectly written, I download it and open it in LO and do the final formatting. So I'm always the one doing the formatting. It's important than when you give it back to your teachers, give it in a .PDF format. (Btw, unrelated, but look into Zotero, it's a life saver)
And a general tip and trick I could give you is to keep close a Windows/Mac machine (not with you at all times, but just something you access fairly easily if you plan in advance). There were a few times a professor mandated that we submitted the work in MS office format, and I didn't want to risk it not being right, so I did it in LO and polished it in Office. That and I was asked to use a very specific, Windows only software, so having it was very useful.
If you have other questions, don't hesitate to ask!
- Thank you so much for writing this elaborate comment! Super appreciate it. :)

I studied Computing Sciences and switched to Linux in my second year. I'll skip the computing science specifics, but my overall experience was really good.
First of all, know that when you install a Linux based OS on your laptop, that you are fully responsible to make sure it works. In a BYOD exam, I had to unzip virtual machine hard disks and import them, and something went wrong. I ended up not being able to do the first try of the exam. So be sure you know how to get around and do whatever you need to do, even the specifics.
I tried to make MS office work on Fedora and got it to work using WinApps. However turning on and off a Windows virtual machine all the time you need office takes time. I found it not worth the hassle. LibreOffice can save documents in .docx format, however, there are some compatibility issues where documents don't look the same on your/your group's end. I have stuck to OnlyOffice which looks very similar to Windows and has very good compatibility. If you want to live edit with friends you can use Google Docs or the web version of Microsoft Office.
My university is invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, the administrators disabled the use of third party mail clients. I had to use the web client of outlook. Minor inconvenience but one to take in to account nonetheless.
If an app is not available you can always create a web app from the web browser so you can get the web version.
If you run in to an application you need, but is not available as a package of your distribution (deb, rpm, flatpak, snap, appimage etc), you might be able to translate it with Wine, an application like Bottles should make this quite easy, as long as it's a simple application. Worst case scenario you need a Windows VM and install it in there.
If you need more specifics let us know. Good luck on your journey!

In college right now 2yr computer science, anything Microsoft is a pain to work offline. I miss the onedrive sync in windows i just use syncthing for that now .
I use onlyoffice since it has one of the best Microsoft office compatibility though I submit my obsidian export as a pdf for my assignments or records.
If you really need ms office or for group projects and you have an o365 account, just use the web version for it.

Almost everything was web based. Being in computer science i did have to write code and compile executables that my TAs running Windows could run; so it wasn't perfectly smooth. There was also Respondus Lockdown, but I could borrow a laptop from the library to use it.

It depends on the field you are studying. I was into CS, using Linux was recommended because the machines they used to test our code were also running linux.
Most fields are going to be okay with linux, the only exception being fields that rely on specialized software like architects, engineers, and audio/video editing. Also, some software like MatLab are possible to run on Linux but it's a pain to set them up.

I was in for computer science major but took lots of other electives. The only course I needed Windows for was Windows App Programming. The rest I was fine with on Linux.

My freshman year I had a windows VM, only for WeChat and MS Teams, but by 2nd year WeChat got Linux support and MS Teams can now run in the browser, so I deleted the VM halfway through 2nd year. Zoom can also run in the browser.
Also a good idea to make sure your microphone and camera works.
And don't update if there's a deadline coming up soon since it might break.
None of my professors required anything to be submitted as .docx. Every single general education class required PDFs for submissions, and programming classes were usually submitted by pushing to code to a Git repository. Group projects were all done in Google Drive which runs in the browser, otherwise latex usually worked (one prof even required latex). I never used LibreOffice, but I'm pretty sure it should be fine for PDFs.
Psychology might require a bunch of proprietary statistical analysis software that probably won't support Linux. I would say a windows VM is best for that. Although R is fine on Linux. I was in computer science so none of my classes required proprietary software. In total over every single class I think only C, C++, Haskell, and Python interpreters/compilers were needed which are all free software. In some of my classes professors said they would refuse to help anyone on Windows if they weren't using an Ubuntu VM. One even said he would subtract points if anyone asked a question about windows. One crazy prof said he would fail you from the class if he saw you developing in Windows instead of the VM. Also any classes that require Docker are going to be way easier on Linux. Some of my friends were electrical engineers and they had to use some big proprietary IDE's for flashing binaries to micro controllers which didn't support Linux, but they were using Windows anyways. Also any CAD software almost certainly won't work, a VM is needed for that.
If you do use a windows VM or dual boot or whatever, make sure to pirate Windows 10 LTSC since it has the least default applications installed and will run faster.
- Don't pirate anything as that is bad for all sorts of reasons.

I'm also curious about how well LibreOffice and Microsoft Office mesh, i.e. can you share and edit documents together with MOffice users if you use LibreOffice?
You can. But if the sender is the type to use linebreaks for spacing and textbox for grouping, be prepared that the layout may explode after saving and reopening the .docx in LO.
But that's the formats (MS OOXML) fault, consists mostly of proprietary extensions, no such issues with .odt (ODF).

Depends on your school/classes. I had no problems. Last school I attended used MS for email etc. I got a discounted license for Office which I was able to access in the browser if/whenever LibreOffice wasn't a good option.
- I tried to use MS office but Libreoffice is easier

It depends on the college and the region honestly. Remember they are trying to prepare you for a job.
With that being said Linux tends to be pretty popular in high ed especially in computer science. Mac OS and of course Windows also have a foothold. I would get into virtualization and distrobox (podman). Even if something is natively supported on Linux is best not to pollute your system with junk. Create separate environments for everything.

I'm a CS student and Linux was great for all of the programming classes. For any classes that were more writing focused you can still use the online versions of MS office/Google drive. I'm assuming there aren't any programs you'll need specific to psychology but that is sometimes a problem with some STEM majors like engineering
The one problem that kept me dual-booting on my laptop was OneNote. I like taking notes using a pen for some classes (and my laptop has pen support) and nothing I tried on Linux even comes close in my experience. I tried obsidian + excalidraw plugin, along with xournalpp, but nothing came close for the way I take notes.