Animal House co-writer Chris Miller was the one who was actually in the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity at Dartmouth. He apparently graduated in 1963, which means this Life Magazine article from 1960 is probably appropriate:
Per that description, Dartmouth was interested in a “solid student and all-around boy”. In terms of numbers, it apparently was getting around 4000 applicants for 800 slots. I am not sure what the yields were back then. The reported mean SAT scores were V 623 M 655. In that era, the average for all test-takers was like V 475 M 495 (give or take).
I would suggest what this is implying is that even among the more academically competitive applicants at a given time, there is always a subpopulation looking for a combination of a solid education and a lot of social fun.
And at least anecdotally, there are kids I know who see UCLA that way–very solid educationally, but can also be a lot of fun. I don’t have any personal experiences to evaluate that view, but I definitely don’t think there is anything wrong with that mindset.
Indeed, in some ways my S24 picked his college (WashU) for similar reasons. And to sort of come full circle, another co-writer of Animal House, Harold Ramis, went to WashU.