@preamble1776
Grades are subjective only to the extent of the job the student is looking for or graduate schools. If the cutoff is a 3.2 and you got a 3.0 or a 3.1 or a 3.194 then all of those are bad because you won’t be getting the job. Meanwhile if a 3.4 gets you the job then that’s a good GPA.
My rule of thumb is that the GPA only gets worse when it closes doors. It’s like you said there’s no difference between a 3.7 and a 4.0 beause the 3.7 won’t close any doors. But the difference between a 3.6 and a 3.4 could be tremendous if your dream is to be an imagineer and Disney doesn’t hire anybody below 3.5.
George W. Bush is a good example that connections are very important but most people don’t have those types of connections. Some do, my friend’s father owns an engineering company and interned their three times throughout high school but most people do not have these connections.