Ime, colleges that offer a challenging and rigorous education tend to attract a lot of highly motivated students.
Some of those highly motivated students thrive on competition: they do their best work when they are around other competitive students.
Some of those highly motivated students are essentially competitive with themselves- they continuously push themselves to do better.
Most colleges that are considered challenging and rigorous have some of both groups.
As for stress, as CollegeDad says ‘it’s only stressful if you aren’t having fun!’ Collegekid2 went to an LAC that is generally considered to be academically intense, found that she had to work harder than she ever had before, but loved the experience.
Most LACs are not known for competitive cultures- it tends to be larger universities, esp those that are heavily pre-professional, that have reputations as having a more competitive ethos… If you want opinions on specific colleges, c’mon back!