High GMAT...Low GPA...Now What?

Thank you both for your responses.

Here's a more detailed work experience history starting with most recent:

Present: Manager Business Implementation Global Brand Standards

- I manage the global brand standards process for 7 big name hotel brands (easily recognizable names) Brand standards is like the quality process used for any other product you would buy but we're talking about hotels. So the "product" is a hotel. Hotels are audited on whether or not that meet the standards to call themselves x brand. So for example a standard would be that the hotel has a free breakfast, so we have auditors go to the hotels and make sure they meet those standards on things like amenities, logos, color schemes, the like. I manage this process at the global level for all four of our regions (Americas, China, Europe, and Asia/Middle East/Africa)

- Responsibilities: conduct statistical research on compliance to brand standards and its relationship to other metrics IE guest satisfaction, revenue, etc. and then I use this information to make recommendations to senior leaders on what should/should not be a standard and what should/should not be measured in the audit to make that bottom line trend up or down.

- Accomplishments: I've only been in this role for about a year but my biggest accomplishment so far is that I built a reporting system for the above stats to basically make them update real time and automatically (the reports used to be run 2x a year and were static) they're now an interactive dashboard. Based on the cost of building the reports manually vs the cost of the dashboard+ number of times it has been run the project has a 300% ROI in the first year. This was my own idea that I came up with and pitched to senior leaders then I implemented the whole process(basically I got tired of doing the reports on my own so I found this solution so I can do other things. along with the 300% ROI the vendor that we used for the software program gave my company and award for Innovative use of technology as a result of the program. My current project is that I am working with a cross functional team to do a proof of concept on whether or not we can minimize resources spent on auditing standards while increasing/staying the same on guest satisfaction and compliance to standards. My job is designing the new auditing process, running the analytics and helping to write the business case on the outcome of whether or not to implement it.

May 2014-November 2015: Global Product Analyst

- Responsibilities: I worked on implementation of the software program the company uses to do various audits. Brand standards, finance audits, safety audits, the like. I did system set up to create software solutions for all different areas of the business. I also did data analytics and reporting on the outcome of the audits to the business(on a much smaller scale than what I do now.)
- Accomplishments: developed an automated way of translating our brand standards audit forms which resulted in a 50% decrease in the amount of time needed to launch new languaged forms to the business; defined the technology requirements and served as technology subject matter expert on the creation of a new software system to manage brand standards selection; developed risk management auditing solution that reduced the time for hotels to received their audit results by 3 months. Promoted from this role into my current one after a year and 7 months at which point I became the youngest female manager in the company.


Pre Graduation from college:

Business Analyst Intern for a small medical research facility May 2013-May 2014:
- Developed the business and marketing plan for expansion of the company into new areas of clinical research Duties include conducting market research, identifying competitors, researching business development opportunities, business plan writing, presenting new business endeavors to potential investors, and strategic planning for future business growth.

Student Clerk for the US Attorney's Office 2006-2013:
Duties included serving visitors to the office, preparing documents for trial, maintenance of electronic document databases and basic data analysis.
Recognized for Outstanding Service on Behalf of the Victims of Crime in 2010 and 2011 for my work with the Victim Witness program which assists victims in testifying at trial


That's pretty much what I've got right now...I do plan on switching companies/roles soon for personal reasons that do not have to do with work. I'm hoping for an senior analyst role or maybe a rotational program but I have some time so I won't be switching for a "lessor" role or company because I am very sensitive to how this could impact my applications in a couple of years....

For schools you said 10-30 with 1-2 reach 2-3 competitive and 1 safe. I've been playing around with this list so far although I have been so concentrated on GMAT I haven't had time to research as much as I would've liked:

Reach: Yale/Columbia (probably Yale over Columbia not a Darden or Duke fan..)
Regular: UT Austin, NYU, CMU
Safe: Arizona State U

What do you think??

HBS is my dream school...not because its HBS (but I can see how you could think that from my previous comment) but because I 1) love boston 2)am extremely competitive and 3) am that friend who likes to argue (although I wouldn't say discuss not argue lol) 2&3 makes the case method very attractive to me. Also their Global experience program is a positive. Also because of my background(i.e. not a lot of coursework in businesss due to my bio degree) I want a traditional MBA program that isn't too focused on one aspect of business like a finance powerhouse or something. I've visited campus and I wore my HBS shirt for good luck on my GMAT. I know my shot is slim..extra slim...BUT I will be trying anyway. (and using a consultant to help with articulating my story)

Thanks for your help....I find it so overwhelming to decide where/how to start researching schools...I didn't do this for my undergrad that much because of aforementioned story so the help is much appreciated.