I don’t know if there is a study directly on that specific proposition, but there have been lots of studies that are in some way relevant to the general proposition that being happy and thriving in other ways tends to promote academic success as well. As an example, here is a study involving COVID effects:
It includes this literature review passage:
The link between happiness and success
Academic success is a broad term that includes several components. Kuh et al. (2006) defined students’ academic success as follows “student success is defined as academic success, engagement in educationally purposeful activities, satisfaction, acquisition of desired knowledge, skills and competencies, persistence, attainment of educational outcomes, and post-college performance (p. 5). York et al. (2015) theorized six components grounded definition to describe academic success including “academic success, satisfaction, acquisition of skills and competencies, persistence, attainment of learning objectives, and career success” (p. 9). Research discoveries have revealed that many factors could affect academic success. These factors contain knowledge and information structures and identifying the inspirational elements such as beliefs, mentalities, and personal qualities (Bassant, 1995).
Farahany (1994) found that people feel worried about their future and achieving their life objectives which include self-effectiveness, self-improvement, gaining varied perspectives, and developing personal skills and abilities and multiple components. Thus, Farahany’s findings (1994) highlight the importance of happiness in human and social development. Higher education students are essential structural dynamics when investigating academic success through a global measurement. College life is full of variable stressors such as mental health status, psychological traits, and the strive for achieving goals. These variables are predicted to influence students, causing daily stress, sadness, and pressure. Happiness is one influential identifiable factor within the findings of scholastic accomplishments. As shown by a research study, individuals who have an acute bliss feeling are increasingly dynamic in scholarly practices and continuous academic education progress. As academic success is a basic goal for higher education students, feeling happy, and being satisfied with one’s life could help students achieve their academic goals. Thus, many researchers studied the relationship between happiness and success (Boehm & Lyubomirsky, 2008; Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Uusiautti, 2013). In one study conducted at the University of Phoenix, the researcher found that the level of happiness can predict academic success by using a linear regression model (Langevin, 2013).
In that particular study they then again found a relationship between their happiness measure and academic success, what they called a moderate positive correlation.
To me this sort of literature is sufficient to conclude that generally prospective students should take any factors that might affect their overall happiness–or perhaps, even more generally, their thriving in college–fairly seriously. I would not say that should trump consideration of factors like affordability and being academically well-prepared, including because it would actually be impossible to disentangle such factors as they likely also would be factors in happiness/thriving. But for lack of a better word, I think it is a good idea to try to think holistically about your college experience, understanding that your academic success may be influenced by a variety of different factors.
And then in turn there are lots more studies linking social relationships, communities, and so on to human happiness, sense of purpose, and again what I might call thriving in general. So I think it is pretty reasonable to think that high on the list of happiness/thriving factors for most college students would be feeling socially engaged, welcomed in the community, and so on.
That’s of course an excellent question, and I think it is well worth knowing that studies of various forms have also shown that humans are often quite adaptable, including more adaptable to various circumstances than they tend to predict in advance. On the plus side, this means social, purposeful, happy people often find ways to be social, purposeful, and happy wherever they find themselves. And on the minus side, this sometimes means unhappy people find ways to be unhappy wherever they find themselves.
That said, I personally think it makes sense to take your best guess as to where you will thrive in college, and go there (as long again as it is comfortably affordable and you are well-prepared). Just to start, you will then be well-positioned to go into that college excited and confident. And then if you do thrive, while it is possible you would thrive equally well elsewhere, no harm done, right? And then if you struggle unexpectedly, well, at least you won’t be to blame for choosing poorly, as you did your best. And then you can learn from what is happening and either figure out how to adapt to your college (which again works quite often), or at least know more specifically what you need to change in a new college.
I think this is good advice for first years, but possibly even more so for transfers. It is difficult (although not unheard of) to transfer more than once. So taking your best guess as to where you will thrive after transferring, including in light of what you learned so far about you and college and what does or does not work for you, really seems very prudent to me.
