USNWR ranking methodology-- the nuts & bolts... Or is it just nuts?

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There are troves and troves of graduate students (and yes, even at the top programs) with no publications under their belts. They had extensive experience and thus could talk in depth about their research as well as good LORs from respected PIs. Those are more important than whether your name can be found on pubmed.

Not for the academic job market, though.

Also, be careful about making field-specific claims and generalizing them. For example, in my field, being scooped doesn’t make something unpublishable (to the extent it’s actually a possibility). Some fields also have a tradition of undergrads doing serious research, so it’s just expected—not necessarily that they’ll have published papers, but that they’ll have been involved in really seriously substantial work. Finally, the number of papers someone might be involved in during their time in a program will vary—in, say, literature, 11 published papers by a PhD student over 5–6 years or so is just crazy talk.