@hopefulhokie24 Probably shouldn’t be saying this but I’ve been watching this thread for a bit.
I actually transferred from my former institution to Tech in the fall. I was in a similar situation as OP was where I didn’t really like the school I attended, even when I submitted the deposit, mainly because it felt like I was settling and I went to the exact school that my parents wanted me to go to, which was 40 minutes away. In the back of my mind, I tried convincing myself that maybe I’ll like the school, but there were so many factors surrounding the school itself that made it pretty evident that I wasn’t going to get the traditional college experience I craved freshman year. Even from orientation, there was talks of certain people who knew they were going to transfer eventually, most after freshman year. Mind you, this was a four-year university. Long story short, I gave it two months before I would decide to start thinking about transferring, which would have been easy since most of classes aligned with Tech’s engineering curriculum, and I ended filing out the application after several events occurred that gave me the sense that this school simply didn’t care about its students (I.e. multiple faculty leaving in the middle of the semester to move over to other jobs and the overall unprofessionalism and lack of communication of the school). The last straw was my study-abroad program that I went on my second semester where they told me that some of the classes wouldn’t transfer back to the university 5 DAYS before my flight. Now I take full-responsibility since I should’ve known that studying abroad as an engineering major would’ve been too good to be true, but throughout the entire program, to which I was with others, it seemed like they were making up everything as they went along. One day they told me one thing, another thing the next. In the end, even the program’s two coordinators ended up leaving in the middle of the semester. In the end, the most fun, and most ironic, thing that happened was finding a group of friends in my STEM classes who also planned on transferring out as well. It was more a “misery meets company” thing and we all ended up transferring together and never looked back. We all enjoy Tech much better 100%.
Sorry for the long story, but I felt it was right to share to help. In my opinion, it would be better to just go to the CC instead of spending more money on a school you don’t feel great about and end up forcing yourself to love. I’ve had upperclassmen friends who’ve transferred to the community college for that very reason because it was more affordable and it made sense for them so they wouldn’t feel “trapped”. Obviously don’t outright hate the university you go to, but if you want to transfer to VT eventually, the community college is one of your best options. Either way, whatever you decide, I wanted to simply say all this as the “perfect” freshman experience can be overrated. If you’re up for it, you can make long-lasting friendships anywhere. Do I wish I had a better experience? Yeah. But in the end, it worked out pretty nicely. Again, just my two cents.