If everyone inflated their grades then how would getting a PhD get any easier? Your uni can grade you on a curve or grade you flat, but for a PhD you will have to be stack ranked
Most PhD admissions committees would probably be fine with the 3.0 too if you had a few years of undergrad research experience under your belt. Even better if you spend a year or two working after undergrad as a lab technician or something. That tells potential professors you can start working immediately 40 hours a week in the lab on assays you already know how to do. Straight A students with no research experience are going to be a net drain on productivity for months if not longer while they put in the time you've already put in learning how to work in a research environment. The classes you take in many STEM PhDs are often rubber stamp classes anyhow, the focus is on working on research outlined in grants.
Largely agree, but I wouldn’t say grad classes are rubber stamped. In the program I was in, the courses were rigorous, but the encouraged attitude was “B’s get degrees.” If you had a 4.0, you weren’t focused enough on research
Didn’t see this response while the thread was active, but the degree in question is the Ph.D. — in my department you needed a B average to stay in the program, and we were explicitly encouraged not to optimize for straight As in grad classes.