^ Absolutely you can do both. S is a good example as he has a full social life while being quite accomplished in the classroom at an academically challenging school.
And yes, I suppose the smaller the school, the more dominant a leading culture would seem. Easier to find more tribe members from a larger pool. But for the most part, college is not cliquey like HS. Nobody really cares what you do as long as they are not prevented from doing what they do.
Looking back at my own college yrs, I had a certain group of friends I met through my dorm. This was at a state flagship of around 20k students. This became my tribe. If we were at a much smaller or larger school, and the dorm was the same, they would still have been my tribe. We just hit it off and are close to this day. Who went to a frat party and who stayed in on Saturday night really didn’t matter.