In my experience, observing co-residents, co-workers, clinical pharmacists, staff pharmacists, and supervisors, I will tell you that where people went to school has very little to do with whether or not they are a good pharmacist.
Unlike business, law, and medicine, there are not good objective markers to compare pharmacy schools. Nearly all established pharmacy schools have 95%+ pass rates on boards (compare to bar exams). Pay will be similar for a class from any school (distinctly different from law and business). Board score averages are not reported, but I would expect them to corellate poorly with any rankings. PCAT scores are not used at all pharmacy schools, and are used to different extents at the ones who do use them. As not all graduates pursue residency, percent matching, matching their top choice, etc., is not useful at this time, either (and this data does not apear to be publicly available anyway).
Rankings frequently have more to do with graduate programs (as opposed to professional programs), affiliation with respected medical centers, and professor prestige, publications, and grant funding. None of these things are strongly tied to the quality of instruction you will receive in a classroom. Overall perception of quality is mostly regional, with most pharmacists holding opinions about some schools over others in a given state, but few having adequate experience to compare a college, for example, in California with one in Massachusetts.
The caveat to this is that all "ranked" schools are well established with significant alumni bases and reputations. While many non-ranked schools also have this, they require you to look further than US News (but not much further than their own websites). It seems you are set on "ranked" pharmacy schools. If this is the case, I would definitely state that nobody will see a #5 school as being better or worse than a #20 school when applying to residency.
If you have over a 3.5 GPA, I don't think GPA matters ever. Period. Even at the 3.3 level, you can be an extremely strong residency candidate, and most programs will be content with your academic performance to ask no questions. Many programs (even top programs) use 3.0 as a minimum. Similarly to rankings, there are perceptions about different schools regionally regarding grade inflation, and thus a 3.1 at one school may be seen by local residency programs as the equivalent to a 3.5 at a school with known grade inflation. Programs will ask you clinical questions if they interview you, and that will matter infinitely more than whether you got an A or a B in Med Chem.
Decent grades are a check mark. A 4.0 from a great school will not get you an interview on its own (and I've seen these applications turned down for interviews). On the other hand, a 2.5 may prevent you from interviewing at all. However, residencies want well-rounded candidates. Involvement in local, state, and national organizations with a 3.2 will look a lot better than a 3.9 with little involvement. So in picking schools, I will go a step further than telling you "get involved early and often." I will suggest you look at schools with a track record of impressive organizational involvement, and lots of opportunities for involvement from your first year forward.
As a resident at an academic medical center with an associated pharmacy school, I will tell you that candidates from the affiliated school are historically interviewed at a rate similar to those from other schools (proportional to applications received - the local schools obviously submit more applications). This is not universal, however, as some programs are known to prefer their own. If you want to know this about a specific program, look at the residency website; most list the alma maters of their current residents. If you are curious about my reasoning for why some programs are each way, PM me.
In many ways, the students at local schools may have a disadvantage, as there may be more familiar names on CV's to contact for reference checks. If you do rotations at the affiliated hospital, you can guarantee every preceptor you have there will give their two cents, solicited or not. Well-connected residency directors will contact the people they know on your CV who DID NOT write you letters of recommendation. In my observation, references, like GPA, will not get you an interview.
Good luck with your decision!
