R2 at ultra-elite school - pls give advice

R2 should not be a big deal. Many schools understand that applicants apply at many schools, some as many as 8 - 10. Even those that put in 4 - 5 cannot create a quality application for all 5 schools in the same round. Some do, but those people are freakishly amazing and scare me. For nomal people, R2 is not a big deal. There will be competition, and you have to realize there are slots filled already so you're competing against fewer people in R2, but also for fewer slots. Don't be afraid that your application will be seen as somehow "late" because you didn't submit in R1. A good applicant stands out in any round.

One of my pet peeves is people that are in the 700 club and say "I have a moderate GMAT score of 710". Are you kidding me? This is the 93rd percentile. There is not a school in the world that would look at your GMAT score and say "Oh, I wonder if this applicant can handle it." If it's an attempt at being modest, it didn't work. A 710 GMAT score is good. It's probably best just to say I scored 710 on the GMAT without any other qualfiers. If the reader thinks it's a good GMAT score, then they'll think that. If the reader thinks it's a moderate score, they'll think that too. There is nothing you can do about it.

As for your chance? You've given us too little to go off of to really have an idea as to your chances. Plus, even if you have great stats that you could write here, we don't know what kind of effort you're going to put into the application as that makes all the difference in the world. A stellar application can become a piece of junk when put together poorly and someone that 90% of people would tell they have no shot can get in because they put 300 hours into their application and did some major introspection and knew exactly what they wanted from an MBA, how that specific school could do it for them, and then successfully showed the AdCom what that applicant has to offer.

This process is honestly more art than science. Crazy, but that's what I've taken from all of the discussions here.