I agree that SUNY buff is an excellent choice, plus they have a very supportive system for their international candidates!
Our daughter is exceptionally bright (Yale admitted) and she was in the UB honors program but her classmates and dorm mates were also strong.
So you buy a winter coat and adjust to the weather, which is what our daughter did. She decorated her single dorm room in Hawaiian themed Decor, complete with, yes, surfboard. She kept the heat on high but didn’t really need to because the rest of the dorm was unbaringly hot. Even for us when we visited.
She still wore her reef sandals in the middle of the snow. I don’t understand that, but go figure.