I thought I might throw in a few thoughts here. They're going to be disjointed, so bear with me.
1. The difference between UVA and random state school is somewhat big. The difference between honors college UVA and regular UVA is enormous. UVA sent people to a lot of top schools this year (for instance: Cornell, Duke, Penn, WashU, and probably a few others). These kids all came from the honors college, where they turned down Ivies/equivalents to go to UVA. Their SAT scores were sky high, they graduated top of their class in high school, and they're doing really big things at really good schools. The "safety" med school for honors college kids is UVA (think about that for a second). There is no functional difference between the honors college UVA kids and your average Ivy Leaguer.
2. At my Ivy undergrad, our median MCAT score for applicants was between a 33 and 34 two years ago. This is based on data sent to the premed office by applicants, but nearly everyone sent your score (you had to say send your score before you either took the exam or got your scores back, I don't remember, so I think this may help account for any sort of self-selection skew). Even if you didn't choose to send your scores (they really emphasized everyone doing so), you had to present them to get a letter from the premed office (which accounts for nearly every applicant - we have it structured so these letters only help you and we don't screen, so you can't be denied, but they office needs the full story). Caveat is that these scores I'm quoting are from a couple years ago, so I'm not sure how that's changed. I don't know our average score for accepted applicants, only applicants in general. People here tend to score pretty well on standardized tests.
3. Nearly all of our intro and mid level science classes are B (sometimes B+, but that's for random stuff like some math courses, biochemistry 2, and some physics classes). Our upper level classes in chem and physics are usually B/B+ as well. In biology, our upper level classes have higher grades than our low/mid level ones (probably A-, sometimes B+). However, these are seminar classes that are all about writing grants, critiquing papers, or is the class where you write your thesis (which takes up nearly all of your senior year). They're not (for the most part, I can think of one class that was an exception, but the professor was retiring that year and just made it super easy) "easy As" for the first part. They consist of the top of the top of the people in the major who are going onto graduate school and want further background in being scientifically literate. Obviously the thesis is not an "easy A" so I'm not going to even go there. For these seminar classes, you can only take them if you have a certain number of lower/mid level biology classes (enough to ensure that you're at the very least getting a minor in biology - in my seminar, everyone was a bio major and I had probably taken the least number of biology classes of everyone in the class), so it's not going to have a huge impact on your GPA by that point in time (after you've survived the gauntlet of lower/mid level classes). People will generally only take one of these upper level courses, two if they're doing a thesis and are ambitious (I took one + thesis, so two total). But by that point, your GPA is pretty much set. I got a 4.0 my senior year in college and my GPA literally improved by 0.01 points. Not any sort of substantial difference.
4. Humanities classes tend to have A- medians on average. For AMCAS, that is a 3.7. I'm only speculating because I only know distributions for the classes I took myself, but in the ones I took (which were widely spread across the board because I was doing an interdisciplinary program that included classes from like 5 different humanities departments), 80ish percent of people got A-s, 10% got As and 10% got B+s. That means for most people, you're getting a nice 3.7 tacked onto your GPA, which, if this is your HIGH grade, not what you want. Remember that a 3.7 OVERALL is the national median GPA for accepted applicants.
FOR KICKS AND GIGGLES
I just went through my transcript and totaled up what an average student would have gotten taking my schedule from freshman to junior year (when I applied). By average student I mean one who got the median grade every time (I have access to these medians). Guess what they would have gotten? A 3.42. Does that sound like a competitive GPA for medical school? If you want to break it down further, the sGPA would have been a 3.29 (just below a B+ median). AO would have been 3.73 (just above an A- median). Around 2/3 of the credits were science and 1/3 of the credits were humanities. Now, let's be generous and give the applicant a 34 on their MCAT. Does a 3.42/34 sound competitive? This is statistically what the average applicant from my school would have. Our median accepted GPA (per the premed office) is a 3.55. I don't know what the median accepted MCAT is, but I would guess (pure speculation, no data to back it up) it's between 33 and 35, inclusive.
This is probably a pretty average distribution of classes for a traditional premed student from my school. Most of my friends from college are applying with a GPA between 3.4 and 3.7. The few that applied with above a 3.7 are all at top 20 schools.
tl;dr
Someone with my class schedule would have, if they were an average student at this Ivy League school, applied to medical school with a 3.42/3.29. Remember that they are competing against a cohort that ranks among the brightest and most motivated students in the world. Does this make it seem any easier?
. Harvard's median MCAT for their applicants is actually lower than that. I don't want to throw out specifics until I dig up my source, but yeah. Also, a school's reputation matters quite a bit. Compare the acceptance rate for kids from your school with your GPA with kids form my alma mater with a similar GPA.
