Nice summation. I will now say I know much more about whom the faculty would admit to their shortlist at my University (top 10)
(a) GMAT score >700
(b) Research Experience - Nil/RA /Publications all are ok
(c) Industry experience - Nil to 12 years experience is ok
(d) SOP - No spelling mistakes, not more than 3 pages. Talks about why you want to do PHD, and if you have either experience of research or industry - you do explain why you want to do PhD NOW. Theme of SOP - Want to enter academic life - for the rest of my life.
(e) Decent Undergrad and Grad school
(f) If you do not have masters degree , you have a 4.0 (or about that GPA ....
)
(g) Recommendation letters - At my Univ 3 letters are needed, at least 2 need to be from Professors. Even If you have not seen the professor for 10 years, it still has to be written by a professor. IF you have a masters degree, at least one LOR from Grad school is compulsory. If you have masters and some experience, you should have ideally two Grad LOR's and one from your supervisor or one undergrad LOR, One Grad LOR and one supervisor LOR. Theme of LOR should be - Capability of doing research. General LOR's saying how great a person you are, are useless.
Hope it helps... May not hold for every univ, but it would be quite similar for most.