I agree with this thinking and after a visit encouraged my DD to be thoughtful about GT engineering. You have to manage your GPA and this is clearly easier some places then others.
That said I think the mist important success factor in looking at a school is to understand what services they offer their pre med students and how many successful pre meds they produce. The stats on this are notoriously ambiguous school to school but just the fact that they care enough to have staff focused on pre med support who have put time and focus on success is important. It is crticial to think beyond GPA in a world of holistic admissions where the appliciation requires research, clinical experience, volunteering and shadowing. These tables from Aamc are interesting data on the topic both the list of schools producing canidiates and the stats by major.