> They went to community college while still living at home. After a year or two of that, they did leave home to go to college. However, they were at a state school with people studying various things and having various interests. There was not a group of like-minded people there. Lots of the students there were commuters and not living in dorms. This person focused on their studies, not on socializing.

This describes me (well, 3 years at CC, but close.) However, I also managed to find the nerds by getting a low-level job at the state school's computing services center, and they're still my friends 30+ years later.

My read is that there are a lot of confounding variables here, but I'm inclined to think that college tends to makes it easier to build a friend network of upwardly mobile people (in the US in the last four+ decades.)