What you are telling me is completely at odds with what others have told me (including faculty on admissions committees) so I imagine it varies from institution to institution. I had a pretty compelling application a year ago and my statement (in my opinion anyways) demonstrated that I was caught up with the academic literature on a particular topic and I had done some work myself implementing and attempting to improve existing techniques. I realized that I may not have worked on that topic in particular, but my hope was that it would demonstrate research aptitude. My application was rejected from 8 schools and I contacted several to see what the problem may have been.
The GRE point I was trying to make was that since 99th percentiles are expected, the test shouldn't exist at all as it is clearly a poor filter.
Perhaps this was the case. I did not do well the first two years. I hated school in fact and averaged a 3.3 or so (the engineering courses felt very soft and uninteresting). This changed when I discovered pure math and theoretical physics and I averaged almost a 4.0 for the last two years with the most difficult courses so I didn't think it would matter. I like engineering now, but I wished that the fundamentals were covered more rigorously as the lack of rigor made me initially very disinterested.
The GRE point I was trying to make was that since 99th percentiles are expected, the test shouldn't exist at all as it is clearly a poor filter.