Depends on too many things! Some of those elite LACs in the middle of nowhere have a “raging party scene” because there’s nothing else to do in the middle of nowhere Maine/Vermont/NY/etc. It may be confined to weekends (and maybe Thursday nights), but it’s probably naïve to think that intellectual kids and partying are inconsistent with each other. So no, I wouldn’t assume that because a school is highly selective that the kids will be engaged in highly cerebral activities most of the time. They may feel like they have enough brain cells that they can afford to kill off a few!
As for the value of the “elite” (more academically competitive) school, it so depends on the field. If you’re going to need graduate school for whatever you do, it’d be worthwhile to know how well the top performing kids do in getting into medical/law/business/grad programs. If you want to be an investment banker or a management consultant for a while when you graduate from college (even for a while), prestige is the name of the game. The top firms only interview at a handful of schools. For many fields, though, this is just not the case and you may be better off having some resources available for graduate school.
As is so often the case, depends on the kid, the school, and the resources available.