Decision time

Hi All,
To wait or not to wait, that is the main question of this long blurb!

I decided to pursue a MBA degree around June of this year. The reason for going back to school was to learn more about the process to start and run a company (actually tried to start one but it didn't go anywhere). Another reason was that I find myself enjoying leading teams and was getting good reviews from upper management. Something I never thought I would do or be good at.

With that in mind, I tackled the first obstacle, GMAT. Spent 2 months cramming for GMAT and even sign up for the Kaplan course. However, I only got 640 on it (49Q,29V). After my GMAT, I started researching different schools that I want to apply. I only looked at the top US schools. Then I discover LBS and INSEAD. Now these are the 2 schools that I really want to go to. Mainly to meet different kind of people from different culture. I feel that will help me more long term (the international aspect of these school + learn a bit of french!). Now that I started my application process and research more into schools and type of people I am competing against, I am starting to have doubts on my chances of getting into those 2 schools.

Now a little bit about myself. I am a 29 year old asian from Taiwan and moved to the United States when I was 12 years old. I graduated with a BS in Computer Science from UVA. However, my GPA wasn't great in college mainly I did not work very hard the first 2 years and then decided to take challenging and interesting courses the the later 2. I have worked full time for 7 years. Some of the highlights are 1 years as a developer in a consulting firm developing https://www.talbots.com and talbots internal customer rep system. 3 yrs self-employeed for 2 small minority own business in the Washington DC area (I actually tried to incorporate and do work for these 2 clients through the corporation, but it didn't work out). I deal from the mundane day-to-day IT support/coding to advicing them on future business expansions (one client want to get into the large fax server farm business for the government) to review their IT hiring for their government contracts. Now I work as a system engineer for a large government contracter dealing more with project management (requirement management, dealing with 4 different development teams, the operation team, the security team). I have also expressed my interests at work to be a project manager and are attending all project management meetings with upper managements.

*pants*

The problem is, outside of work, I don't really have a lot of volunteering experience. I like to learn new technologies on my own but these are all very 1 dimensional (computer, IT), recently started photography.

So with my low GPA, low GMAT score, almost no volunteering work (other than personal hobbies, setting up photosharing websites for friends), I feel I should postpon my application by 1 year and spend the next year to bring my GMAT up to par (700-ish) and do more volunteering work to make myself more competitive.


What do you guys think?