I dislike my university and it's making me depressed?

I’m going to keep this rather vague to maintain as much anonymity as possible.

I don’t like my university. I was a top high school student and got into a good college. I got into the most competitive program at my school (Mech. Eng), and then switched to Computer Science with a minor in ElecEng which I love, but once I got there I started feeling bad all the time. My GPA slipped badly (down to around 2.75) my freshman year, mostly due to my emotional state at the time. For my sophomore year, I thought I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to do something similar to a tuition exchange and went to an out-of-state university for those two semesters while paying tuition at my school. During that time I felt great, I got a 3.88 GPA both semesters, and honestly the difference was huge.

Now I’m back home. Next semester I’ll be a junior and back at my real school and I’m already dreading it. I want to transfer out-of-state, but I’m scared of the extremely high tuition for OOS and debt since I’m basically covered here. Because my GPA went down so much my freshman year, right now it’s at 3.2 which isn’t very competitive so I assume I won’t get any significant financial aid at an out of state school. Why not transfer to another in-state school? Again, to maintain anonymity I’ll just say the state university system here is going through some hard times, all campuses are quite similar, and I’m in the best public university in the state, especially for my major.

Basically, I wanted to just get this out there since my parents think I’m over reacting about not liking my school so much. Has anyone had a similar experience? I would be happy to read any advice you may have!

If going OOS didn’t make financial sense when you were in hs, it’s likely to make even less sense now that you’re unlikely to qualify for any merit aid.

Maybe it was just first year issues. I think many people really have bad first years and want to transfer or quit but by 2nd/3rd they get it together. Hopefully the break out of state was a good buffer for you to do well your last 2 years. I don’t think transferring is viable financially from the information you provided.

As a junior you’ll mostly have classes in your major so your experience will be different. Also, try to take honors seminars as those ‘feel’ different from a big lecture hall experience.
You could try another 'exchange ’ and/or study abroad, Spring junior year and Fall senior year?

Maybe youre school offers some on line options. Agree that if finances are an issue, don’t add to that. Many students have mood/adjustment issues early in college. It may not be the school…