Gyngyn has mentioned before that he feels the content of the section is the most, of the four sections, resembling problems that arise in clinical practice. I'll let him explain how that affects interpretation but if I had to guess the answer will always be Composite >>>>>> any single section. At the end of the day, there will never be a single thing that "makes" an application (there are a myriad single things that can break you, such as IAs or extremely low academic scores).
The Stanford admissions dean did a talk at a Uc undergrad about what medical schools look for in admissions (google it, Gabriel Garcia is his name) and in it he says something to the effect of "the first thing we consider is academic readiness. This is a switch, not a continuum." In other words, a 39 is not "more ready" than a 37. However, from his words it was clear the bar was already very high for Stanford, "A 3.9 is not more prepared than a 3.8, they are both academically prepared." I think, even if unintentional, his choice to compare a 3.9 to a 3.8 rather than a 3.8 to 3.7 is telling.
Of course, if Stanford were really serious in this endeavor they would do away with GPA and MCAT to begin with and instead just institute specific cutoffs which they feel signify academic preparedness, perhaps giving a second look to applicants who specify they are post-baccs or nontrads since their numbers can be a bit misleading when looked at all at once. Stanford, like all other schools, is still a slave to Step exams and the race to have the most impressive and prestigious roster of alumni possible.
Tangentially, I had a very interesting conversation with a Stanford MD student who said that only about 60% of the graduating class goes on to residency and the rest often end up doing something else in medicine that isn't clinical practice or leaving for startups, consulting, etc. I asked whether he believed that every time an MD student didn't go on to residency the medical admissions committee had essentially failed in their presumed mission of choosing physicians. He told me, convincingly, that at Stanford students often discovered many ways to contribute to medicine, science or patient care without actually going to residency so people diversified and he felt this was a positive thing for the school and it's students.
In the current system everyone wins if by everyone you mean the applicants and the medical school. I feel like we could be doing more to actually choose the people we really believed would be the best physicians for the people who need them the most outside of having a handful of mission specific schools in certain areas.
