@rachelnguyn Colby “advertises” itself as “this amazing liberal arts college” because that’s exactly what it is. You sound as if someone tricked you into choosing it. Btw, I have no personal stake in Colby.
“It took me this summer and a bunch of conversations with others” to realize it wasn’t the place for you. Yeah, that is completely and totally illogical and irrational. If you had said “it took me a year of being on campus” to realize it wasn’t the place for you, that might make sense.
Yes, it’s totally irrational and very nearly completely not sensible to decide BEFORE you’ve even set foot on campus at a wonderful LAC to plan to drop out and transfer to community college so that you can transfer to a more expensive school. Picking and choosing the comments you want to hear kind of defeats the purpose of asking for advice, right?
There is a reason why Colby has a very high freshman retention rate and students from almost every state and 80 countries. People are happy there, and that inlcudes people from cities and from California. Of course, not everyone will stay, but it seems that you did your homework before you even visited. You made a choice based on logic. You obviously didn’t hate it when you visited, or you would never have paid your deposit.
I think you have to let go of your defeatist attitude and stop dwelling on how homesick you will be. EVERY student will be homesick. All these jitters you are talking about are completely normal and common. Read the college life forum, which is filled with those types of posts. The difference between those who successfully transition to college and those who don’t is that students who will fare best are those who give it a chance. You haven’t come close to giving it a chance because you haven’t even arrived on campus yet. If you fail, it will be because you created a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wish you the best of luck, but think hard about all you’ve worked for so far. Sabotaging your happiness is not the best strategy.