Yes, I totally agree with the importance given to matching faculty interests. I was talking to one of the professors who admitted me and I was saying that I really had no idea of how competitive my application was, and I was mentioning my unknown undergrad school and stuff like that, and the only thing she was talking about was how our research interest are exactly the same and how excited she was to have found someone interested in the same things.
So, I guess we are answering the question we had some months ago: "What is the most important element of an application?" I'd say, for the top schools, it is definitly matching research interests, which they can get from your
SOP and/or previous research projects. For lower-ranked schools, GRE and GPA are probably more important. That's my take on things, anyhow.