Firstly of all i make a comment which has been covered all ready feel free to shout as i tried to read all the posts but may have missed some good points.

Secondly i am a current student at a university studying games development.

I use my laptop in lectures for notes, and in the labs for practical work. And also the odd game of left for dead, unreal tournament and other such games.

This is why i feel I7 is over kill a bit as i am running an intel celeron 1000M at only 1.8Ghz with 4GB of ram (ddr3) the graphics card is a Intel HD graphics, and the hdd is 500gb plater(aka not ssd). All that cost around £200 which works out at $335.62 at asda(wal*Mart) which is a little expensive for the specs i know but it was a gift.

So in all honesty i think the specs have been told are very high for what you say you will be using as the most demanding programme stated would probably be photoshop (and before you ask i have worked in unity before and photoshop) but you shouldn't have any problems unless you install the master suite of adobe products(aka all of them in one install pack) as that is a ram hog even when not running(a think it added a lot of hidden services running in the backgound).

the only time you really would notice an ssd is booting to be honest and the price of them you have to ask your self is the few seconds quicker boot and loading of programmes worth the cash.

So basically if you can best think you can do is ask if you can wait till after your first day before getting a laptop then you can see exactly how you will be using it because as a student you will want to save money laptops in general are more expensive then a desktop to maintain and upgrade (for instance once i managed to make three gaming pc's in under £100 with specs like amd phenom x4, 945 8gb ram, gtx 450 se which is not bad considering there where three of them and it works out that is less than $170) yes i know they are more portable which is why i recommend getting a very cheap laptop which can handle the requirements for the course but then have the desktop for work at home as than you can get a bigger monitor and upgrade it in parts when needed.

But at the end of the day it is your choice what you go with i just wanted to put things in prospective so you don't think you NEED the cutting edge laptop or what ever you can go with much lower specs and still get a decent game developing environment to work in. p.s. if you do get a desktop or even if you don't two screens is a lot better for working on so much so i hate working on my laptop by it's self so in uni i sometimes use a monitor from one of the uni pc's(as i don't use theirs as i set up my development environment just how i like it :P)

Also an other tip get an optical mouse with your laptop, as working with a track pad can be annoying and slow at times.

Taking a laptop to class is mostly an excuse to ignore the professor, and dick around on social media.

Which is a totally valid reason to bring a notebook because lets face it: What else is there to do?

at asda(wal*Mart)

I might have a somewhat strong opinion on this, but DO NOT buy your computer hardware where you buy your toilet paper. A couple of my relatives tried it and I tried it once myself, so I can say with sufficient statistical significance: They are not build to last.
I have never seen hardware die that quickly and they had everything, from NICs burning themselves to death over failing power supplys to the frame around a notebooks display breaking due to the repeated mechanical strain of opening and closing it.

So in all honesty i think the specs have been told are very high for what you say you will be using as the most demanding programme stated would probably be photoshop (and before you ask i have worked in unity before and photoshop) but you shouldn't have any problems unless you install the master suite of adobe products(aka all of them in one install pack) as that is a ram hog even when not running(a think it added a lot of hidden services running in the backgound).

I agree that some of the specs were quite high and personally I would not spend more than 1.4k US$ (== 1k Euro) on a notebook but you should keep in mind, that programmers have different requirements then artists. For an artist, an Intel HD card might just be the right card, maybe slightly too slow to display all the high end effects that aren't that interesting anyways. For a programmer however, it might not support those new features that you want to learn about, and that everyone will use in a couple of years.