GMAT First Attempt 550 - Indian Accountant with 8 years exp

Hi Guys,

I am new to this club. A brief about myself.

I am an Indan Male Age 30. I am a qualified accountant from the Indian Body.

8 years work experience. ( Articled Clerk --- Auditor --- Accountant ---Finance Manager ---- Finance Manager in Africa ( Heading the country Finance).

So, after spending that kind of time in Accounting and Finance, I wanted to take the big leap to do an MBA to achieve either of the below.

1. Move up the finance food chain i.e., IB/PE/Hedge Funds
2. Shift to General Management roles.

So as a first step, enrolled in the GMAT and appeared on Sep 10,2013.

Preparation Brief:

Like in the case of many working professionals, it was tough to balance work and study. However, the prep was as below.

1. OG 13th Edition - Did all problems in Quant. Verbal - Did CR and half of sentence correction questions
2. Manhattan Guides - Completed all Quant Guides and SC
3. 3 practice tests - 2 GMAT Prep and 1 Princeton

The final score in the GMAT was 550 ( Q40,V25).

My Takeaways:

1. The preparation was not upto the mark . Since I went through many pages in the forum, I understand that complete revision of OG and Manhattan are essential.

My Query:
I knew that I need to retake the exam. However, I wish to understand if the above score of 550 was a result of gaps in fundamentals or lack of practice. If so, what are the specific things I need to do to fix them. I am aiming for the top 10 schools. I do understand that GMAT pool is bit tough for Indian applicants. But I am not sure if being a finance guy (not being an Indian IT Engineer) helps in the scheme of things. I plan to write GMAT again by Oct End or Nov 15 ( Considering NYU Stern deadline is Nov15 and INSEAD Nov 27th).

And, should I parallely focus on the essays part right away. Becoz considering the Round 2 deadlines which spread from Nov 15 till Jan 2014, I guess it will be tough to crack the essays post GMAT result.