“It does not seem to be that hard to find less selective colleges with good (for example) English offerings”
Some less selective schools that are not talked about have heavily awarded students in some fields. For example, out of 28 schools eligible to submit essays for the Jim Murray Foundation, about 20% have been won by St. Bonaventure students, which has produced 7 Pulitzer Prize winning journalists and has one of the top and longest running literary magazines and one the top student newspapers. So, there are some schools that punch significantly harder than peers or what selectivity would suggest.