Aaaand you are shooting yourself in the foot. Those Harvard/Stanford/MIT graduates will have both higher GPA and prestige, which is all that matters in the beginning (and via networking) throughout your career. You might feel good about getting an A in some impossible class, but nevertheless you are already seriously disadvantaged when competing for high-end jobs comparing to grade-inflated schools. Nobody cares that only 2 persons in your class got A in a given semester and most happily accepted just some passing grade, or that half of the students had to retake a particular class.
Waterloo has 5 times the number of undergrads as Harvard. Heck, it has twice as many as Harvard, Stanford, and MIT combined. This, in a country with 1/10th the population of the United States, should give you some perspective. I doubt there are many, if any, at my school who turned down offers from Harvard/Stanford/MIT.
Anyone who can get into Harvard/Stanford/MIT is already in the tiniest elite of the elite in this hemisphere. That's all anyone that goes to those schools is signalling to their future employers.
I understand that, I did my undergrad at a super demanding university that was always scoring high in ACM ICPC competitions, beating top 10 often, but average GPA was under 2.5 due to no grade inflation, super demanding classes (A grades were singularities, most grades clustered around the lowest passing ones), and that didn't do anyone any favor when applying to prestigious schools or jobs afterwards unless one had a gold medal from olympiad or similar (even when rocking FAANG interviews, the "unknown" factor was too strong). Then doing top 10 masters was much easier and much more rewarding job-wise. I know Waterloo is top 2 in Canada, but when top schools go through grade inflation, the hard, honest universities without grade inflation put their graduates at a disadvantage.
The math faculty at Waterloo has a number of crusaders against grade inflation. They track the high school of every person who applies and see how their grades correlate between high school and university. Schools that consistently show large drops get penalized in future applications.
I am learning a lot and enjoying the challenging course work so far. As I get closer to graduation, I'll see whether my GPA improves enough to consider grad school. Otherwise, I'll be relying on Waterloo's excellent co-op program to get my foot in the door with employers.
