yore
I think definitely check with the course instructors at your university. They'll tell you exactly.
In my software development program they told us on day 1 of classes what kind of a system we'll need.
Also i tried to go about this while trying to stay private by going linux. It was an absolute disaster. I had to quickly revert to windows.
But your program might be different. A lot of security software is on windows and linux. So do check with them.
Also privacy might go out the window because they'll require to quickly sign up for "this and that". Often you'll have to make a google and microsoft accounts because a lot of collaboration work is done on these very unprivate platforms. So.
I'd say expect to be forced into extremely unprivate scenarios, having to sign into different services and giving email, phone number, etc; having to use google drive and docs.
Make sure your laptop is at least 15" or you'll face much pain. Id say dedicate a laptop to this school work and consider it totally unprivate and use without headache. If you stress trying to be private on it you might run into a lot of headache.
Lastly, if you have freedom of choice then go with the platform that you are most familiar with to eliminate extra troubleshooting headache.
In my program it simply became impossible to keep with my privacy routines, going as far as being requested to install apps like slack and discord on my phone, which i refused. Not doing so caused a lot of headche and trouble for me as well as many side eyed looks. Just a heads up.