What are some of the 'red flags' for the admissions committees of graduate school programs?

There are SO MANY of them.... Here's a short list

1. extremely low score on one of the GRE or standardized tests
It's entirely possible that it is not representative, i.e. took right after a family tragedy or some special reason. But that is a flag that needs to be explained.

2. low GPA

3. abnormalities in recommendation letters, e.g. similar signatures/paper type/verbiage that suggests the same person wrote them all.  Lack of a letter from his/her primary advisor...

4. glaring mistakes in simple aspects of the application, e.g. misspelling their own name or the name of the school or confusing the school with another in the application.

Those are the common ones.  There are weirder examples out there.

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