<p>I had not realized that you were not an American citizen or permanent resident. I assumed you were Asian American, had studied Chinese in Saturday school, and went to “study abroad” in your father’s country of origin.
If you need an F1 visa to study in the US: Yes, it’s very rare and very very difficult to transfer to a US college after freshman year for internationals, especially if you need financial aid. There are PERHAPS 5 spots each year in top schools for internationals with financial need. Many schools have zero.
You can look into European schools, depending on what languages you speak:
French schools are basically free (like, under $1,000/year tuition for internationals), German schools have very low tuition too, Dutch and Finnish schools have programs in English for about $8,000 tuition, and of course you have the UK where tuition is about $15,000.</p>