What distro would you guys recommend for a first time Linux user.

I am a first year CS student and I wanted to install Linux on an old laptop I had. I originally installed the ubuntu iso and was planning on flashing it onto a USB drive, but I saw some other distros like Debian that looked really nice and sleek. I know there are a lot of different skill levels to these different distributions, so let me know if Debian would b way over my head and I should stick to Ubuntu, or maybe try something like arch.