The Importance of GPA

GPA: We either hate it (if we have a low/average one), or love it (if we have a high one). But what does GPA really tell a person? Does it tell a person how much the student actually knows? Does it tell a person how much effort and passion someone has? Does it tell the person whether that person had to work and take care of his/her family through the school career? The simple answer I think is not "not really". GPA I've always viewed it as "how well can you pattern-recognize exams, and take them" as opposed to actually knowing any material. One guy I know who got into some special program in the mathematics department, is making new insightful, original research into a theorum, and what does he constantly get for his math courses? Not A's, but B's. He says there are three categories of students: A's for people that can take exams but not really know the material, B's for people that can know it, but they don't really try, and C's for people who don't know what they're doing anyway. While some or most people wouldn't agree with this, I know that sometimes when studying for a class, I go to study other topics other than what will be in the exams, and I really learn new stuff that I would not learn in the lectures that sticks to me. Because I'm a premed, I have to pay constant attention to the grades, but meanwhile I always feel they are an extremely pointless thing of an educational system that is deep-routed in old traditions and not adapted to the new generation of learning.