Hi. Great profile. I think your GMAT is up there. While the average scores for these programs are fairly high, it’s kind of a side effect of the caliber of applicants, so I feel you are probably within the range already, so if there is other areas of your application that you can work on to improve your chances, you can focus on those but if the best use of your time is retaking the gym Matt, I think pushing it up 50 points would be a strong move.

Ideally for these programs you want to show a flurry of activity. It doesn’t have to be super cohesive but it needs to be purposeful and preferably have some kind of accomplishment or measurable goal or some kind of satisfying completion.

Failures are absolutely acceptable and expected. If you don’t fail you don’t learn so admissions love to ask about failures to see and evaluate your level of maturity. Only strong people are not afraid of speaking about failures and only mature people are wise enough to learn from them.