I did my first quarter of optometry school with just my laptop and id say its almost the same as when I got my ipad in terms of lectures. It all depends on your note taking style and sometimes I switch back to my laptop to type out notes. However, being able to go paperless was such a huge help for me. I felt like everything was much more orderly and organized + it was easier to refer back to assignments quickly. Definitely do not regret getting an ipad, I got an older generation, smaller screen size one and it works fine for me and since all my notes are backed up on drive I didn't need much memory at all.