Sure. There is attrition at all of these schools for many reasons (academic, behavioral, financial, just not ready or the experience not as expected). Our son’s freshman neighbor stuck it out through first semester sophomore year but went home for Christmas and didn’t come back. He never got over his homesickness. A few classmates were not invited back due to academic underperformance. All of these things happen, there are downsides. The worst case of buyer’s remorse I’ve ever seen on this board was a parent who was considering pulling his daughter out of Deerfield because her grades weren’t good enough for an Ivy and the parent didn’t think the financial sacrifice was worth an outcome the daughter could achieve at home. That was one sad thread. Or this one where a student was asked to voluntarily withdraw for “teenage mistakes.” Several posters here have had children leave BS for various reasons:
There was a poster here a while back named Center who was pretty salty about her son’s experience with college counseling at Exeter. I tried to search for that but her screen name doesn’t come up as a search option though her posts exist.