Leaving the country to avoid freshman writing and a couple of general ed. classes seems a little extreme. Big public universities are going to have some pretty fun and easy options in the social sciences and humanities that actually provide a nice breather to a heavy coursework in the major. I fulfilled a humanities rqmt with the History of Rock & Roll at Penn State (they still offer it).
I have a sophomore who isn’t a very strong writer (actually, I don’t t think he’s ever put any effort into it because he doesn’t like it, especially literary analysis). He’s actually planning to take AP Lang next year because he knows he needs to work on it and is hoping to do well enough to get out of Freshman comp.