I wouldn't look too hard at Geekbench ratings. I understand what you're looking for, something that'll last through college and perform well, but when you think about it it's only a .3 GHZ difference clock speed.
As far as actual application performance goes, I think you'll notice a big difference with a SSD more than you would with a .3 GHZ upgrade. Really when you look at it, you're choosing between a .3 GHZ clock upgrade versus a Retina display and a SSD. Now if storage space is a problem, that's different, but there's always external storage.
And for the optical disc, I think you'd be very surprised how little most people use it. I used to think the same thing when Apple announced the Air but then I found myself using my optical drive once a year, twice at most. I realize this will vary for different people, but most people most likely have little use. There's always the superdrive as well.
As a fellow college student, I can tell you portability and weight are great factors for a student. For example, this past college semester I had 2 laptops, an 11 inch MBA and a 15 inch MBP. You would think I'd almost always use the 15 inch MBP as it's much more powerful and practical, but I found myself taking the 11 inch Air every time, simply because of it's portability and weight. Simply said, the 15 inch Retina is a lot easier to carry and a lot lighter and slimmer than the older gen MBP.
Just giving my thoughts, you'll love both laptops! (But especially the Retina display, it's amazing

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I'm deciding whether to choose the normal Macbook Pro normal model vs the Macbook Pro Retina Display Model. Since I will be a CIS major I'm looking for something that will be the best bet based on both GPU and CPU performance. I'm a little tied between both models however, looking back at the benchmarks that macrumors.com posted earlier this week I'm gearing more towards the 15-inch normal 2.6ghz model. I'm probably going to be doing some video conversion, gaming and xcode applications, however, I think that having a built-in drive is essential(for some odd reason). The 15-inch top-end model is ranked much higher than the lower end retina display model based on Geekbench testing
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/benchmarks-for-mid-2012-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air/ . I'm not so concerned about boot speeds rather than overall computer performance and application performance based on how well the processor can handle certain tasks. Which one would be the best bet.