It's a mixed bag. I know plenty of folks in college who were good at mining connections. Everyone made "friends" with them because it was thought these kids would "succeed". These were the folks who could rack up 600 connections, but we all knew that they weren't friends with all those people.
I personally straddled that line myself, though in a different way. Being a leader of any student organization is likely to boost your friend count by around 100, and I had held important positions in two. But at the end of the day, that's not how many close friends you have.
Demographics can also make a difference. If you went to a big high school-- say 800 kids per class --you'd probably chit-chat with around 200 other kids on a regular basis. I had friends who did events with other schools in upstate, and that kicked up the contact list even more. Things like that can inordinately inflate your friend count on FB. But again, you were probably only close to maybe twelve of all those kids you knew from high school.
In all, I feel that Facebook was a tool to keep track of all the people you met in college (while you were still there). After you leave school, it becomes a tool to keep in touch with them occasionally. The other major use seems to be procrastination and banter. By no means is it a true count of how many friends you have.