Should I apply to a top school in the USA

Hey Stacy,

I was hoping you could give me a little guidance. My profile is probably a little different from most.

SO I am 29 and Australian. Will be 30 early next year. Now this may or may not be a good thing to say when applying, but I've taken a couple of extra years to work out what I want to do career wise.

So I graduated from Sydney University (top tier Australian university) in mid 2004 with a bachelor of economics. I had 3 majors (finance, econometrics and economics). My grades well, how can I say, terrible.

In September 2004, after I began working at Macquarie Bank, a International investment bank, based in Australia (the largest Australian IB, ~28,000 staff and np of $1b an)

I worked there for 4 years, promoted twice. I did some M&A work, helped start a couple of businesses (such as a taxi network / payments business etc --> you can look that one up as it got allot of press here "lime taxis"), helped work on a few structured products, and some property transaction. Basically I'm very solid when it comes to evaluating businesses, M/A, strategy and valuation etc - the core skills of IB) I left in late 2008 on my own free will. I then travelled a bit, and tried to start my own business, but never went through with it. Something I plan to do post MBA.

I started a Masters of Economics at the beginning of 2010, and my grades this time were great, GPA equal to 3.75 or maybe higher. But I only did one semester full-time, and then I started work for another company.

I worked for a former colleague of mine from Macquarie Bank, in a small lobby group. Well actually it’s not so small for a lobby group, Nationally it would have maybe 50-60 staff. 12 in NSW where I was. Initially I began as a consultant, working on a specific submission to the NSW government, after a while, a manager there left, and I was offered the job as manager of policy in NSW, however, I only worked in this capacity until September this year, as I realised it wasn't for me and wanted to get into private equity. I could probably try straight away, but I want to do an MBA first. Allot of my past skills and jobs are related.

I did the GMAT 2 weeks ago and got 710 87th % verbal 85th % quant 92% overall

I plan to do it again in 2 weeks, since I only finished 85% - 90% of the questiojns and was not thinking very clearly during it. I'm sure I can do better. 5 on the AWA. (as a side question, do i need to go higher than 710)

Ofcourse I would like to get into a top school, I don't want to and I won't settle for second best. If I can't get into a top school in the US, I will look at ASIA. Do you think I will stand a good chance??

Thank you very much for taking a look at my profile.

Cheers