Your perspective is heavily skewed by your "friends" who attend super lowly ranked, badly funded state schools. You need to trust us when we say that there are A LOT of intelligent people out there who do not go to prestigious schools. You were a great high school student, but that does NOT ever mean you are one of the smartest out there. There are many people who aren't even close enough to their "peak" in high school to fare well in undergraduate admissions. That is plain to see that, even in med school, it's not the Ivy Leaguers who do the best on exams, but just in general, the people who put in the most time.
You also need to recognize that U Chicago isn't the toughest school out there. While you may be smarter than that person at the neighboring school who has 4.0, you might not be smarter than the person with a 3.9 or 3.8 at that same school. You just haven't met many of these people yet, so you have a very skewed view. Yes, the people with 3.8+ at top institutions are incredibly intelligent, one of the brightest out there. But that rule does not apply to people who don't do as well at those institutions, since SAT and high school GPA are very very poor indicators of academic power, even worse than college GPA.