Saying this only to give you hope that things can improve - my son at Worcester is enjoying his time at Oxford. I’m sure that the maths crowd is different from the PPE/E&M crowd (a lot fewer Union hacks I would bet), but he’s done a lot to broaden his relationships. He’s active with the chess team, the ski team, plays college football, basketball & tennis. They are also trying to re-boot the Oxford American Society. And yes - you should feel good about a just a few marks off distinction in your prelims. My son who was a state math champ his junior and senior year was in the same boat. My hunch is that you could hopefully improve your experience.
Please feel free to DM me if you would like to get in touch with him.
Rice has an excellent economics program. https://economics.rice.edu
If you do decide to transfer, you should probably consider Penn as well; it is large enough to accommodate quite a few transfer students and has an urban campus. I assume econ is good there - it’s most definitely not my area of expertise - and they have a PPE program. Good luck!
“You are [doing well]. You are just in the deep end of the pool- kind of like an academic Olympics, where everybody else is also a super strong swimmer and only swimming in their best event.”
And don’t underestimate how well prepared British students are, especially at private schools, for the first year of their Oxbridge courses. For example, whereas most schools would teach to a subset of questions on the A level math exam (IIRC you had to answer 8 out of a choice of 20+), we were prepared (mostly by teachers who had been to Oxbridge and had PhDs) for every single question, so it was relatively straightforward to get 100% or very close to that.
I was able to more or less coast through my first year and get a first because we had covered so much extra material at school. Only in the second year did things start to level out (I just missed a first that year), so I had to knuckle down and work hard for a first in finals when everyone was competing on equal terms.
You’ll be 2/3 of the way completed with your Oxford degree by the time you get transfer decisions from American colleges. The application deadlines for transfers is in Feb/March of each year, with decisions coming out by May. By that time you will have completed Trinity term 2020.
Then once you transfer to an American Uni, you’ll have a tough time completing your degree in 2 years, especially at places like UChicago and Columbia. Both of these colleges have core requirements. Although you may get partial credit for your PPE work, I doubt you’ll get anywhere near 2 full years of credit.
You may be better off just finishing the 3 year program at Oxford and then applying to Masters/PhD programs in the US.
Economics BA/BS programs typically have the same upper level undergraduate core (intermediate microeconomics, intermediate macroeconomics, econometrics) plus upper level economics electives to fill out the major. However, the academic differences that may matter to any given student include (a) how math/statistics intensive the core and elective economics courses are (more math/statistics = better for pre-PhD, but not necessarily for other goals), (b) what types of economics electives are offered.
Other academic differences include other degree requirements. A US university with heavy general education requirements may mean that a transfer from a UK university with no general education requirements will have to take many “catch up” courses, for example.
Obviously, net price after scholarships and financial aid are the most important factor for most students’ choice of university, so costs need to be considered by most. Other aspects like social ones can also matter (for example, if the university is particularly fraternity/sorority heavy, it could be that most students by junior year are in them, so that a transfer student may find the social scene already divided into smaller camps that s/he is on the outside of).