The OP goes to a magical school of distorted reality. Unless of course they are truly special enough to have a small factory line in Foxconn devoted solely to their institution where dGPUs are being put in only a select number of base 15" Haswell models based upon a handful of orders from the students there. And the secrecy around this particular assembly line is top notch so that word doesn't leak out that Apple is indeed producing the 15" rMBP that so many want but are unable to get. But the profit margins for selling 50 of these at extreme discounted educational prices to said institution are undoubtedly worth the extra assembly, covert costs, and potential backlash just to make the OP think long and hard about which model to purchase!
well, you're obviously free to believe what you wish. my main concern was to solicit advice and im happy to rephrase it as: if I had a choice between unicorn device 1 and real device 2 at these price points, what should i do. (in the op, i think underestimated the extent to which budget constraints would affect my decision making in the haze of enthusiasm from learning of this great deal--again imaginary if you like)
That said, just to humor you (of course you can just say all this is made up too):
My initial reaction was "this must be a typo". so I called the office in charge of these matters and the person in charge of the computer/tablet procurement program informed me that it was not a typo. The office negotiates with Apple after consulting various departments in the university, and the architecture school had placed high priority on dGPU. I have no idea how the negotiation process works, but as she explained finalizing the terms with apple is precisely why they had nothing for sale/and no information to give inquiring students until weeks after the release. They also know nothing of what models Apple will be introducing until the announcement just like everyone else, so then it takes some time to sort out what to offer. As it happens, the 13 in rMBP the university is offering is just the normal base 13in config, which is why I ended up not buying through them.
It is also worth noting that the school does not carry any stock of these computers. so i could not right now walk into some store and purchase it. Rather they are shipped from the companies directly to the buyers. There is a blanket caveat (not just on apple computers) that delivery could take up to one month, though normally the computers arrive sooner. I'm at the point where I need one ASAP so I tried to see if I could get any guarantees on ship dates (and they could not provide one--another one of the considerations that made it a tiny bit easier to forego making the purchase). One of the reasons for this, she explained, is that the involved companies install the university software bundle themselves (things like MS Office, JMP PRO, etc) so what we receive is the laptop in unopened apple packaging just like everyone else with the university included software pre-installed. (The software alone probably amounts to hundreds of dollars, but I didnt mention this, because a) the software is separately avaiable for purchase from the school for highly subsidized prices anyways and b) i already have all the licensingfor what i need). That's all to say, somewhere in the manufacture/package/ship line, extra work is being done anyways (even on normal configurations).
I have spent time in one capacity or another at 4 universities (welcome to being an academic), and I know at least one other one received custom computers (not sure if from apple--i wasnt looking for an apple at the time), so it's perhaps not as unusual of a practice as you think. As for the other two, I simply don't know.
