Tyler:
I'm sorry, I think I'm making something that is fairly simple into something more complex than it needs to be. The point is that you want the gain set such that virtually all of the pixels are close to 65535 without going over. If you have a couple of pixels that are "stuck on" or very hot, they will get to 65535 very quickly. That's why you can typically ignore the max value as long as the mean or median are in the range you want. If both your median and mean are a few thousand ADU below 65535, you should be fine even if you have a max of 65535. Why don't you take a test white shot and post your min, max, median and mean? That would help me understand how close you are.
Tim