There are two levels of "it's who you know and not what you know."

The first is blatant, extreme nepotism. I know exactly how you feel on that, because it's completely rampant in the oil industry.

The second is the whole "don't be the guy who has no soft skills and walks around with a stick up his ass that nobody wants to work with." And I'm going to be real with you for a second, you're really coming off like the person that nobody wants to work with. I wasn't lying when I said you have an attitude problem.

Stuff like this:

I'm paying far more tuition and got into a better college than a lot of people

I lose out on an internship to someone from Montana State

not your connections to influential people or your race or your speaking skills- sure they help, but they're all secondary.

Makes you look like an asshole. Straight up. Soft skills are extremely important, and outside of cases of extreme nepotism, companies would rather have a reasonably competent engineer who is personable and has good soft skills over a somewhat smarter person who acts entitled, has poor soft skills, and thinks he's better than everyone else.

Let me clue you in on something here, you don't have to spend stupid amounts of money for "prestige" to be a good engineer. ABET is a thing dude. You have to be reasonably competent and likable. I personally turned down acceptance to a prestigious school for a better scholarship and I'm doing fine. I know someone at my state school who has a sub 3.0 GPA but works for a Musk company because he's an awesome guy and had impressive project experience. You can't just ride out your prestigious school and GPA and expect companies to come chase you down. Good jobs are competitive these days and if you're going to walk around acting like you're better than everyone else when half the kids from Montana State have more experience than you do, don't expect much success.

My original point still stands - drop the poor attitude if you want a job. Otherwise, start looking into grad schools where they actually care about GPA.