I've been looking at universities for a doctoral degree in social science. As most of the schools require a high GPA, a good GRE score, and some publication, I wanted to know how competitive is it to get into these big name grad schools. Very competitive yes, but what is the criterion that they emphasize most on; like how much weight does a scholarly publication (research pub) have as compared to a mediocre GPA, or a GRE in the top 80 percentile. I know the depth of competitiveness I am faced with; but wanted to know if any of our sajhaites who have been to those schools or have gotten into graduate programs would be able to suggest me a bit.