Physics GRE Discussion Forums

Hi. I was wondering, do we all agree that grades and research experience are more important than GREs? If so, are the grades from the latter part of one's undergraduate careers more important than grades from the first part(i.e. junior and senior year grades are weighed more heavily than freshman and sophomore grades)?
Has anyone been rejected from an elite graduate school with a perfect or near perfect GPA and/or GRE EVEN with research experience?
Do some schools have a reputation of being harder than other schools? If so, when graduate committees meet do they take that into consideration as well?
I guess what I want to know is what are the most important factors that graduate schools take into consideration?

Its really hard to say, but in my experience I think that I was rejected by Harvard, Berkeley, Yale and Stanford because of my poor GRE scores, and possibly because I attend a big public school mainly known for partying.

I did however get accepted at Cornell which suggests that my application was pretty strong. I guess my point is that the GRE scores are probably the least important part, but in order to get into all of the top schools great GRE scores are required. (unless you have some sort of connections)

i know of people who've been rejected from the top few schools with perfects or upper 900's and decent grades. in one case, it was because the guy had no research experience. i seriously think that if you're applying to top 5 or 6, they weed out everyone who don't have good scores and grades. so out of like 1000 applications, the weeding process weeds out like 500. and then it's research that determines whether you're different than the other 499 people with great grades and scores.

i have a good score, but my grades are crap. no practical research. but, i did take a bunch of grad courses as an undergrad.

OK. So the ideal candidate would have high GREs(the General Test and the Physics Subject Test), high grades, and research experience. So does that mean that letters of recommendations from professors then are VERY important when one applies to an elite graduate school?