The Oxbridge college experience has some commonality with US LACs, except for the single subject focus and high stakes exams. But individual colleges do provide a close social network and a lot of sports and clubs (albeit entirely organized by the students). And there’s a level of support if you ask for it, just not the sort of proactive handholding that some US parents and students expect.
However it’s an expensive proposition for US students, unless the comparison is with full pay at US private colleges, so wouldn’t be relevant to OP.
Yes, that’s what I meant by the university itself has no involvement. They’re not going to admit a soccer player or trumpeter over someone else because they need to fill a spot in the soccer team or the marching band - because the university itself has neither.
The university very definitely has a soccer team, just not a semi-professional one. And for sports that are heavily university-based, such as rowing, they certainly do admit students (albeit almost entirely at graduate level) whose entire reason for attending is to row in the Boat Race. It’s just that at undergrad level, sporting prowess isn’t balanced against (and certainly doesn’t outweigh) academic potential in the way most US colleges decide on admissions. Likewise non-academic ECs are meaningless, but things like Math Olympiads are highly valued.
What would your budget be?
Indeed, the best English-speaking universities are not tuition free:
Scotland in general, and StAndrews in particular, is very welcoming and English speaking. Stirling is also an excellent choice, college town, nice campus, less competitive to get into. Tuition at Stirling would be about $18,000 a year and the Ancient 4 would be more expensive.
Same thing for Trinity and UCD in Ireland, although housing is a problem (Maynooth seems to be better wrt housing and easier to get into). Malta is expensive by European standards (€8,500 tuition) and requires 5 core courses senior year + 3 APs or junior college entrance with a GPA above 2.0 and senior year classes in English, Foreign Language, Math, History, and one from bio/chem/physics.
Then the Netherlands and their international honors colleges, with tuition about €13,000 https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/liberal-arts-and-sciences https://www.ucr.nl/about-ucr/discover/liberal-arts-sciences/
Bocconi has programs in English but you need some knowledge of Italian, because all life around you, including administrative issues, will be in Italian. Same thing for international programs in Spain.
Science Po has programs in English (Reims campus, in particular) and will have some English speaking admin but you’re expected to know enough French to navigate your daily life there.