Hello! I recently started university this fall, and I am already having doubts about whether I made the right decision or not. Due to financial concerns, I had to pick between 2 in state schools, none of which I felt were my “dream school.” Now that I’m at one of them (the higher ranked one, because that was ultimately the main factor in my decision making- other than that, the schools seem practically the same), I fear that I should’ve just taken the financial burden of going to a school I really connected with.
Is this a common feeling? I wanted a mid size school with a beautiful, compact campus in a big city. However, I am in a LARGE school with a somewhat beautiful (some parts are better than others), spread out campus in a college town. However, I don’t want to entirely blame the school, and I don’t know if I am only doing that because I am bitter or because I’ve had a string of unfortunate things happen to me here.
I’m not sure if it’s just the “Freshmen blues” or being homesick, but either way I think I am exhibiting signs of depression, so whatever the cause I would appreciate if it were mediated soon.
If you have any questions, please let me know. And thank you for your help! 
(P.S. I’m not even sure if this post made sense/was coherent, it’s 2 in the morning and my brain is a bit fried from a busy day. But if I left out any info just ask for it (: )
It’s a common feeling. I ended up choosing UC Berkeley over Carnegie Mellon due to cost, and every day when I see the friends I made online posting pictures of CMU, I always feel a pang of regret and bitterness. But then I look outside, I walk around Sproul Plaza, I visit Sather Tower, I take the BART to San Francisco, and I realize that things could have been a lot worse. Make the best of what you have, and realize that you are fortunate to be where you are.
What you are going through is not unusual. There is no guarantee that a “dream school” would be giving you the feelings that you believe that you are lacking as you navigate the steep learning curve that is the transition to college and early adulthood. @anxiousenior1 gives some excellent advice. As you go through your life you are going to be faced with choice after choice and you aren’t always going to be able to pick the “dream” one. There will always be advantages and disadvantages, excitement and disappointment, pleasure and pain, etc etc. What will really help you right now is to try to keep your mindset focused on the positives and the future. Be hopeful. Dig in to what you have available to you. Maybe it isn’t exactly what you envisioned last year when you were applying to the schools you chose, but maybe there are things there that are amazing or surprising that you haven’t even discovered yet. Get involved and make the best of it. Don’t go through four years grieving what you didn’t get, celebrate what you did get and work toward graduating without regret.
If you can’t do that on your own, perhaps consider a little counseling at your student counseling center. They help freshman with various transitional problems and feelings that depression might be developing every single day.