I put off buying a new gaming laptop for my daughter until I could find one with decent specs for under US$1000. I'd check every week or so. Finally, thanks to Black Friday, I found two yesterday that had just crept under.
They're really almost identical; I ended up buying the TUF (which has since gone up but only by $20) because it had a larger SSD. I'm sure somebody else can do better - please comment here if you do! - but this seems to set a pretty good benchmark.
I owned the previous generation of the Asus TUF, the A15, along with my wife, and can recommend it.
My experience with these low-end gaming laptops is that the screens are low quality. You might buy her an external monitor and a wireless keyboard + mouse so she can use it in clamshell mode.
But those are fantastic deals -- kind of jealous actually. Last year I paid ~$1,400 on Black Friday for an MSI GE76 Raider 11UE that has these specs:
Asus TUF F15 at B&H: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1702433-REG/asus_fx50...
Acer Predator Helios at Best Buy: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/acer-predator-helios-300-15-6-f...
They're really almost identical; I ended up buying the TUF (which has since gone up but only by $20) because it had a larger SSD. I'm sure somebody else can do better - please comment here if you do! - but this seems to set a pretty good benchmark.