That was not my experience. I found that as I worked my way into elite institutions people were just playing more sophisticated, elaborate forms of the monkey-see-monkey-do game they were playing everywhere else.
Some people take their specialization too far, in my opinion.
To be fair, I think there is a tier of elite institutions which primarily attract the prestige/wealth crowd (Ivy League, etc), and a tier just below them in rankings which attract the nerds who want to do hard intellectual work.