@RichInPitt As other posters pointed out, this isn’t a phenomenon at T20 LACs interestingly, so it’s mainly restricted to T20 universities. It’s probably due to a combination of the competition to get into the school to begin with permeating ever facet of student life on some level (even at Brown) and the medium number of students. State schools have large enough student bodies to balance the # of clubs with the # of interested students, whereas T20 universities probably have a lot more pre-professional students by % than others (IIRC ~70% of JHU freshmen indicate they are pre-med, though this number decreases due to factors such as grades, extracurriculars, and finding other interests.)
This thread was more a FYI than anything to prospective students to understand what exactly they’re signing up for, if they decide to attend one of these schools (no matter if they’re as far apart as Columbia and Brown, they still share common aspects.)