I suspect that here at SDN we overvalue and admire 39+ MCAT scores more than we do 3.9+ GPAs and that that leads to a lot of speculation.
Data show the opposite, that it's easier to get in somewhere with a 4.0/28 (65.1% acceptance rate) than with a 3.3/35 (49.7%).
It's difficult to answer a question like "rank cGPA vs. sGPA vs MCAT" since all three correlate for most applicants. Sure, there are applicants whose numbers don't match, but it's my opinion that whether an adcom is willing to forgive a low cGPA (or one of the other two) is entirely variable on med school, adcom, and each applicant's particulars. Ultimately, any answer to the "rank cGPA vs. sGPA vs MCAT" question would hold little prescriptive value (If MCAT were more important, how would you, and would anyone, willingly sacrifice 0.7 GPA points to score 7 points higher on the MCAT?), so why bother asking it?
I mean no offense to OP or anyone interested in debating the topic (debating the seemingly obscure application process can be fun). I used to obsess over finding an answer to this question, but I think it's more useful to ask:
What can a low-MCAT/high-GPA applicant do to improve one's application?
What can a high-MCAT/low-GPA applicant do to improve one's application?
I don't distinguish between s/cGPA since I think any preference would be dependent on med school. Scrolling through the MSAR, most school's median cGPAs are about 0.1 GPA points higher, reflecting the tendency for most applicants' cGPAs to be that much higher than their sGPAs, whereas a few schools have a median sGPA that's at least as high as their median cGPA; interpret that how you will. At med schools with near 4.0 medians, I suspect that cGPA would merely
appear to be weighted more than sGPA since it's harder to get a 4.0 cGPA than a 4.0 sGPA, since the latter is numerically included in the former.