When I attended a top tier school I found it completely devoid of "my people." "My people" were other deviants from poor, broken homes. We had developed a counterculture that I identified very strongly with. No one I met at college dressed the way we dressed, or listened to the music we liked. I was surrounded by advantaged kids from private schools with whom I had very little in common.

I found that many of these students were open-minded and not judgmental, despite their privileged upbringings. I made friends fairly easily, and I learned to appreciate having conversations with my intellectual peers. In that domain, I was with "my people" for the first time. Now I have 2 sets of friends, and I appreciate them both in different ways.

Sometimes I see people here post about having difficulty finding opportunities for their children to interact with "true peers". HK has posted about her daughter being bemused by smart boys choosing to date girls less intelligent than themselves. I say there is much more to a person than their intellect. Your associations are based on criteria of your own choosing. These criteria need not be centered around intellectual ability, and we shouldn't be surprised if others with high ability choose different criteria than we do.