Any chance of little advice?

Hi there,

Per the suggestion of another gmat clubber (along with my personal interest in gaining additional perspective) I wanted to solicit a little advice.

Somewhat verbose bio:

I am a 28 year old non-minority male who grew up in Illinois.

University (small private university in the state with a reasonable local reputation)
- Graduated cum laude with a 3.41
- Double majored in Computer Science and Psychology
- Served as Vice President for our service fraternity
- Re-chartered and Re-Activated another student organization, becoming the first president

After graduation, I worked in IT for 3 years.
- After the 1.5 year mark, I suggested that I relocate to help transition one of our offices through an acquisition. I was promoted and helped to transition an office away from the support of consultants, effectively running IT in the office of 40-50 people (reporting into another office). I also helped train an additional IT staff member (co-worker, not a direct report).
- After one year there, I offered to take over a different office and become the first on-site IT person there (no title change, but a pay bump and increased responsibility).
After 6 months there, I joined the Peace Corps and served in a small West-African country for 2 years.
- I independently sought out work opportunities at a number of local schools.
- I designed an IT training resource (manuals, videos, free tools, etc.) to help local professionals update their skills and conducting 6 regional trainings throughout the country, reaching approximately 100 individuals.
- I worked with a local school to write a grant, obtain funding, and started construction to upgrade sanitation facilities.
- I launched and ran a high school peer tutoring group for over a year, which ultimately reached 25% of the study body.
- I started a small evening math class for 7th-12th grade girls at a local hostel which I taught for a year.
- I worked with the school library to ensure all students had daily access to the library, obtained additional books, and ensured that librarians were hired and trained.
- Obtained approval from the Peace Corps country director to launch a scholarship program to be run by volunteers and organized a steering committee.

After returning home in August, I joined a very early stage startup (Currently 2 co-founders and I)
- Online startup, socially focused with a very unique concept and business model
- I manage most interactions with our web development company
- I advise on business strategy, business operations and everything else (it’s just the three of us) – it seems like we’ve all had our hands in everything.
- We spent our first year in the design-stage and now we are beginning to obtain our first customers.
- I have been attending small business workshops 1-2 times per month.
- I also volunteer 1-2 Saturdays per month with Habitat for humanity.
- I have completed 2 Accounting courses and a math class through UCLA extension, all A’s.

While in the Peace Corps, I obtained a 710, 40V (77%),47Q (89%) on the GMAT.


Career Goal:
- Post-graduation, I intend to launch a socially-responsible business. (While working with entrepreneurs and taking several classes has filled in some of the gaps from not having a business undergraduate education, I look at the MBA as a way of completing that process while giving me the opportunity to build a network and to meet business partners as well.)

I wanted to provide all of the information above so that I can obtain a fairly realistic response. I’ve always found responses of “strong extracurriculars” or “some extracurriculars” to be very subjective. Now that you have far too much information about me, I was hoping I could get a little bit of candid advice:

1.) Do you think that schools like Fuqua, Darden, Ross, or Johnson would make sense? Am I selling myself short, aiming too high, or am I in the ballpark?

2.) From a “next steps” perspective, I’m planning on taking one more course to complete an alternative transcript (4 courses, hopefully all A’s) and I am looking to re-take the GMAT as well (my gmatprep results were 10-20 points higher than my actual score and now I will be studying with access to electricity). I am also going to try to get involved a little more in my community, possibly with another local organization - Does this make sense?

3.) Having had some experience with the application process before, I have learned the importance of having a consistent message. Should I not mention the possibility of taking a more traditional MBA position short-term, post-graduation even if I consider that to be a fairly likely possibility?

Thank you in advance for all of your help - I’ve been working primarily in a vacuum, and can certainly use all of the advice I can get.