I don't know. I think these sorts of competitions are actually becoming more and more common. I've read about other ones at various schools, and I think they even had some similar competitions at my school. I certainly remember advertisements for some sort of tech startup-geared competition as well as something similar focused on Bioengineering.

Maybe you just didn't hear about it at your school? The one at MIT and the Bioengineering one I saw here were both aimed at PhD students and Postdocs rather than undergrads, so that could be a factor as well.