That's anecdotal evidence of nothing in particular. We don't know where and how big your school is, what department you're in, etc. It's doubtful you're interacting with the entire student population.
OttawaU and CarletonU, 40,000/30,000 students. I'm all over the place there and my partner is student ambassador. I'm in engineering while she's in social sciences.
Of course it's anecdotal... it's my own observation. Feel free to provide your own observations. I don't recall finding any concrete studies on what students use, so that's all I have. Go to the library at your local college/university, or the cafeteria, lounges, study areas, walk through the dorms, look in the lectures... see for yourself. And those are the places you'd expect to see iPads first.
Most surprising is how many bland, cheapo laptops I see on campus. I'd say it's still about 1/3 MacBooks... more popular in the Arts programs than in the hard sciences for sure. I don't see very many Surfaces, either, which I had expected to as well.
And I know many departments in the past made really dumb knee-jerk technology recommendations. My wife went to an ivy league school in the mid 2000s for her master's degree in a non math/science field. The dept said it "required" all students to have a particular laptop model: the absolute highest priced, most tricked-out 15" laptop that Dell sold at the time. She used about 1/20th of its capability.
Perhaps that was the case. Now, they don't advise anyone what to get as far as I can tell. The only advice they ever give was that if you have a Mac, you'll need Bootcamp/VM with Windows for some of the software we use in engineering.
iPad has multitasking of course, and can connect to most wireless accessories. And clearly an external monitor is optional to getting a college degree. They're not day trading.
Multitasking on an iPad gets horrendously cumbersome the more stuff you need access to.
The 9.7" screen is quite small to begin with, and apps that do let you split means you have two windows each the size of a postcard (half that again if using the on-screen keyboard).
You can't connect to external monitor (which is a massive help if your screen is going to be <10"), no mouse, and thumb drives (yes, it's still something occasionally required to work with). We just got hit with a ransomware attack at Carleton that caused wifi outages, so we had to use one for a final presentation.
No matter what field you're in, you'll be researching and producing. It's normal to have at least a few things open at a minimum: the file you're working on, the instructions file, reference material (possibly etextbooks or something), and browser(s) with multiple tabs for research.
Then you might also need room for communication apps (skype, facetime, google hangouts, imessage) if you're working with people; graphing/calculation software, previous submissions that you're referencing material from, image/diagram software, reference material in the form of audio/video files (such as interviews), etc.
I could go on all day, but you get the idea. No matter what field you're in, you'll be doing a good chunk of that. iOS is absolutely great at doing many things (such as annotation, reading, viewing content), it quickly becomes very tiring and cumbersome to have to deal with more than a few things at a time.
Even the 13" MacBooks can start to feel cramped for space when working on assignments that involve more resources. My partner sometimes borrows my 17" (only to later tell me it's too heavy), but we dock them to a 27" 1440p monitor with mouse and keyboard when at home so as to make the best use of time.
Ironically, one of my favorite uses for my iPad is as an external monitor for my MacBook.
It's great for e-texts as well since it's so much easier to carry. It's all about using the tools that make your workflow as efficient, ergonomic, and effective as possible so as to not waste time.
