@rdeng2614 For MIT at least, I’m not sure if the above is true. Yes there is competition, but students are more likely to collaborate on psets and projects, and professors usually encourage collaboration on psets (as long as each student attempts and writes up his/her own solution). Also, I’m pretty sure MIT’s grading policies strongly discourage using bell curves. I’m saying this from experience…
However you bring up some good points. It’s one thing just to get into MIT (or Harvard, Caltech), another to perform successfully.