I tend to discourage students' families from buying the typical "consumer-grade" laptops, because of the build quality -- lack of durability and robustness. I.e. you get mostly plastic cases, sometimes even plastic hinges, etc. I've just seen too many of these half broken with the screens hanging part off, etc.
So this means no Dell Inspiron, no Lenovo except for Thinkpad line, no HP Pavilion.
Also, the consumer laptops tend to have large capacity (e.g. Terabyte), but really slow mechanical hard drives (5400RPM). Aside from video editting, I can't imagine what you'd do with a Terabyte in a laptop (how'd you back it up? -- you know it's guaranteed to fail). There's simply no reason to put mechanical hard drives in laptops (or even desktops) anymore. An SSD will make everything on your laptop faster, will be more reliable, and draw less power.
Downside to getting a business-grade laptop with an SSD is you'll pay somewhat more, and/or get somewhat less in terms of computer components. The trade-off is getting a machine that's likely to physically survive through high school *and* college.
BestBuy has a pretty decent
14" Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga for $900 (briefly on sale for $800 a few weeks ago). This laptop even comes with a Wacom Stylus (and a place to dock it and charge it within the laptop). Plus an nVidia 940M chip -- not the fastest, but a decent accelerator for CAD work.
A little cheaper, but bigger would be this
HP Envy ($826 with 10% student discount). It's a little large and heavy -- 15.6" screen. Would be good if you're collaborating on CAD, but might not be ideal for carrying around school.