Do you mean Uni?
If you want to focus on the study, it's not that easy to get into dating through that experience anyway. You have a lot of independent people also wanting to focus on the study. There will be some cliquey groups. some really nice groups, really busy people. It's harder to get into dating now compared to 15 years ago, because I firmly believe a lot more people are living their own heads because of technology, 15 years ago, the distractions simply were not on the scale of today, so it was a much warmer experience being around your study group. Again this is a generalisation by me, but I think it's somewhat true.
Yes you can go without dating, but the likely scenario is that at least opportunities will show up. Meaning you will bump into potential dates and you may fall into college outings just from someone saying "want to come to this or that on the weekend?", even if it's bowling or a restaurant. people may approach you and offer to be friends etc.
if you are stand offish then it will be a lot harder to maintain these opportunities. So what tends to happen is that college friends may come or go, or friendships may not last if you are behaving avoidant.
Essentially it comes down to cause and affect. People may initiate conversations with you the courage side of it means that you can keep a friendship going, by showing interest with those people each day when you see them, if they are in another class, you could make an effort to speak to them at lunch times.
People have lots of regrets about college or university, the one problem is the mindset of "cause" and "affect". "cause" is when you start to initiate friendships, you cause the start of the conversation, you cause by being the first to lighten the mood, you cause by asking the friend if they want to do something on the weekend, like "i'll come over to yours and we can play a video game" or to see a movie. Then you see the affect of that from the work you put into it.
It's very easy to go to university and to expect everything to be handed to you, we think it'll be as easy as just showing up. Now sometimes it is. But to get the most out of it, just try to be the first to show interest instead of waiting for others to. For a moment forget about anxiety and just focus on the work rate, the sweat you put into finding friends/dates is what will bring you reward for that effort.
To summarise it down into a short description, my advice? "just show interest in people". Don't let an avoidant nature completely dominate the experience.
I'd say if you just exist and study a lot, dating is plausible but it may not happen as well.
In terms of success, a lot of people say that a girlfriend motivates the guys even more with study and success, so often having that support of a date, doesn't have to be a girlfriend, it could be a couple of friends that you really care about. But something to help you motivate yourself to push through the pain of the hard times is surely worth it rather than going it completely independent, even just so you can share experiences.
