Curious as to what is the median GPA at the various schools. From what I can gather there does not appear to be grade inflation as is often the case at undergrad schools.
I agree that class rank is more of an "equalizer" amongst the schools but it should be duly noted that there are residency programs out there who won't grant interviews if you don't have at least a a 3.5 GPA (for example). So if you go to a small school and don't have a 3.5 but happen to be ranked in the top 1/3 of your class, you might be out of luck. Where, if you went to school xyz who inflates grades, students from these schools will at least get the opportunity to interview at those programs. Just throwing that out there.
There is CERTAINLY grade inflation at several of the schools (Ohio I believe is one of them). At the end of the day, class rank is infinitely more important than gpa, as there is no better way to directly compare a student to their peers, especially since all of the classes and all of the exams cannot be identical amongt the schools.
It's an interesting talking point, although it shouldn't be a reason to choose one school over another.
I'm sure g squared can answer for himself but it's been reported on here several times about many students graduating Ohio with perfect 4.0 GPAs, as in more than a dozen per class. Personally that's where I think the grade inflation comes in that gets talked about, at the top end of the spectrum.Is your comment regarding Ohio libel or backed by fact? To the best of my knowledge for our graduating class at Ohio our average GPA was approximately 2.9, no different than Scholl's as someone reported.
At the same time, they lost around 40 people, so it's no cakewalk.