Well, GPA matters a lot. If you lack in the experience department, I will have to advise you to apply for a graduate degree first instead of directly applying to a PhD degree. If you're trying to get to, say, Harvard or Yale, you can't get in without 90%tile in both verbal and quantitative. Take note that even if you get an 800 in quantitative, that's only approximately 92%. As for Verbal, I would say that a score of 600 and above is good. I scored in the upper 600's, and even that was more than 90%tile. Now, what sort of publications do you have? Is it in your field? That might help you to some degree. What matters more though is, how much experience do you have in your field? What kind of job did you hold? I had a combined score of 1400+ in quantitative and verbal, with a solid 3.5 GPA from a very good school, yet I had a hard time getting into a PhD program, so ultimately I decided to go for my Master's degree before taking the doctoral route. The course that I am pursuing is a fairly new one, and there aren't many schools out there(not even in Ivy Leagues, except for Stanford) that have degrees in my field anyway. Also, don't get too hung up on the school name. In Grad schools, it's the the name of the institution in that school that matters, not the school name.