@welphereigo One drawback (if you want more of an intellectual community) of going to an elite private school is the amount of pre-professionalism, but I suppose some schools are better at encouraging students to be more intellectual or at least be happily nerdy than others. And yes, like you, at my school, I too have met the people who are great at making the grades, but really enjoy getting them easily (so were first and foremost schedule manipulators…would ensure it had only 1 challenging course at a time or would ensure that the supposedly challenging course was with an easier instructor), but fortunately there was and is a decent stronghold of students who enjoyed the joys and even the “struggle” of learning (recently ran into a girl I tutor who claimed she enjoyed the very difficult exam she took on Thursday in her ochem course, and she isn’t the only that felt that way). Honestly, I think the faculty play a huge role in creating the community you speak of. Some of the best teachers are often the most rigorous so students find a way to band together and get through it and find an appreciation for the high level at which they are being pushed along the way (my guess is that at some schools, students are less tolerant or receptive to that scenario but at most elites, students should be as long as the teaching is indeed solid). Some of my STEM teachers were a cult in and of themselves due to the way they ran their class, the difficulty of assignments and exams they wrote, and the mentoring they did with students.
They made it hard such that most students had to resign to the fact that they wouldn’t make an A (or even a B+ for that matter), yet could still walk out of the class with lots of skills and knowledge (sometimes the instructors would flat out say, “do the best you can, but sit back and enjoy learning it”). They also developed certain traditions and special characteristics of their courses.
Noticeably, instructors that didn’t have such high bars (usually the STEM instructors that were powerpoint whores or where you just has to pretty much intake and recall lots of content) or induced such community or humility, we tended to just stick to working on our own and focusing on the grade. You may want to try finding the instructors there that create environments like the one I mention as it brings out a different side in students that you may like. And honestly, those are the types of classes I made long time friends with and took courses with later (being even mildly successful in such classes made you more confident about advanced courses and made you want to learn more or apply the knowledge elsewhere). It’s often all about the track you put yourself on and sometimes it takes a little time to find the right one. Generally, carefully chosen instructors is a start to find those students you think are missing. Simply finding the well-respected instructors that are not so because they are just easy/“fair” is a start.
As for schoolspirit: Don’t really know much about it in the traditional sense. My guess is that you indeed have a different idea of what it is versus other students at the school. As far as this goes, I’m wondering if you should even be at a D-1 school (maybe a WUSTL or a JHU type of place is more fitting as they are D-3’s with engineering and many of the D-3s don’t have rah rah but are known for a different kind of community feel that those looking for rah rah don’t see, but those maybe more interested in multi-culturalism would be interested in. They also more than retain the academic intensity you want/need) to be honest.