How important is gpa?

[oilers99]

<p>I am a freshman looking to transfer from Notre Dame next year. I'm trying to get into a good school (Penn, Cornell, Duke) but I've heard that unless you have a 3.6 you shouldn't even waste your time with these schools. My question is will schools I'm applying to take into consideration that I go to a competitive university when looking at my GPA, and give me a little more leniency since getting a high GPA at ND is harder than most places?</p>