I went to Amherst, and I think you're spot-on with the east-coast mentality. In my experience, most of the students there just got onto the law-school/grad-school/Wall-Street bus and sailed comfortably into their next gig.
It's also worth noting that Harvard used to actively encourage undergraduates to take a year off to recharge their batteries and get a better sense of life outside of college.
The lack of a supportive environment for startups, and consequent lack of risk-taking, is an east-coast/west-coast thing. There aren't very many Amherst entrepreneurs. Most of my classmates did the minimum-wage "life experience" thing before finally going to law school when they wanted to settle down. It's like MIT encourages you to work really hard, Stanford encourages you to find your passion and then work really hard, and Amherst just encourages you to find your passion.