Hi,

I'm an Indian female interested in doing an MBA in either the US or UK. I'm very interested in strategic planning and business development. I just wrote my GMAT a week ago and got 660 (Q44 V37), had expected at least 700, so it is a bit of a disappointment but I'm not sure how much I can improve in such a short time period so I've decided to not write it again. I come from a engineering background having done my grad in Telecom from a top engineering college of my State. I'm not sure what my GPA would be but I graduated with First Class lying in the top 30% of my class. I work in a small product company that focus on video quality monitoring. I wouldn't term myself as an IT person mainly because my job has nothing to do with IT (at least that's how i see it). I have 2 yrs of work experience, by the time i start my MBA it would be 3.

Here's what I'm worried about, i had a job offer from a reputed company in India with a good pay, but I declined that offer to join the company I am working with presently. My dad founded the company and is the CEO, but I mainly joined cause I would be applying everything i learnt about in 4 yrs of college to do my job and i loved the technology they were working with. My designation is Product Manager - now I know ppl automatically conclude that I was given this because of who I am, I thought so too when I joined, but after two years I think I can confidently say I haven't let down my superiors who saw the potential in me and entrusted with such a big responsibility. I was dead set on not doing a job that 90% of engineers do, I wanted to learn, explore and do something different. And I got to do exactly that, I did a lot of research on upcoming strategies that the company should move towards, analysis on the pros and cons of that and helped implement this move as well. I was also responsible for a particular patent pending facet of our product that is our Intellectual Property and a big USP with our clients. The second year I spent a lot of time marketing our products in the US. I have had the opportunity to present and demo our product to our clients like Ericsson. I have also spent close to 5 months training our clients on how to use our products.

I guess what I wanna ask is, do I have a chance at some good schools with my score and work experience. The schools that I would wanna apply are:
Harvard
ISB
Yale
Cornell
Oxford: Said
Cambridge: Judge
Tuck
Tepper
Ross

I understand that some of the above schools may be out of reach, but if so I would like some advice on where to apply and where to not apply. I would love to apply to Booth and Kellogg as well but is it worth it? Am I unique enough for them, do I stand a chance? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Also should I talk about working in a company founded by my dad or not. I understand that some of the opportunities i have been given may have been cause of who I am but I also know that I have gone above and beyond every expectation my superiors have had of me. Due to that I think I was given a lot of assignments well beyond my age and experience, not because of my surname but because I had proved myself before.

Please let me know what I should do in terms of what schools to apply to and what strategy to use. Also do you think taking help from an MBA consultant would improve my chances?

Many Thanks in advance..

Thank you so much for your thoughts! The company is not a big one, but a very specialized product firm working in a very niche market. Of course our clients are all telecom service providers so they range in size from North America's largest to a small provider with 35,000 customers.

I'm wondering if I should retake my GMAT to improve my chances, but I'm not sure yet. Maybe I will apply to a couple schools and try this time.

I will follow your advice on working with an MBA consultant, new to that area, so have to read up on that as well.

Lastly, I do have a question, is it advisable to name any clients or vendors in my resume or essays, or is it best to leave them anonymous.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my profile and help me out!

Thank you so much Jon for taking time out to answer my questions!