fixed a problem where I referred to LXQT as LXDE by mistake. Either way, not a fan of either DE personally, so eh.
@napreviewz what system do you use at the moment? If its Windows, I recommend either Linut Mint or Kubuntu, and if its MacOS, I'd recommend Ubuntu as a first distro! You can always try out in a VM or dualboot to see if its right for you!
keep in mind that it is a totally different operating system (esp if you're coming from windows, since MacOS and Linux are both Unix-likes, which makes them a little more alike than Windows, which is totally non-unix)
but since it is totally different, you won't find an exact "basically just windows" distro, and there is a learning curve no matter what
Good luck on applying to grad school! It's an admirable pursuit.