Any Advice?

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

For anyone out there in the same boat, as a transfer to ND myself, I know that ND admissions counselors actually recommend you go somewhere else for a year if you want to transfer in. Holy Cross/SMC have a lot of the benefits of their proximity to Notre Dame, but if transferring is your goal it's actually more difficult. They get a large number of applications from those schools, but only want to take a certain amount of them for the sake of diversity.
That's just one consideration in deciding what path to take, but I wouldn't go anywhere I didn't think I'd be happy for four years if it ends up you have to stick around. I actually wouldn't recommend going into freshman year of college with a strict intent to transfer, it's a bad frame of mind. You might end up liking where you are, but it's hard to invest yourself if you're committed to not coming back. I took the wrong attitude in, and while I probably still would have transferred (and glad I did), it could have been a much more fruitful year.