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.