Young applicant: advice?

[Jeremy]

Details:

22 y/o management consultant
3.8 GPA from ivy-league business undergrad in 2007, (also have a science degree)
770 on the GMATS (up from 680, I retook it).
Pretty involved in college when I was there, and am now heavily involved in volunteering with non profits.

I want to apply for the 2009 cycle, which would mean I'd only have 2 years of experience.

Questions:

How many / which schools should I be applying to if I choose to apply so early? (Top choices are HBS and Stanford, also considering Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg). What are some critical issues to address since I will be younger than the average applicant?

Any thoughts on positioning since I already have a business undergrad degree?

How much of my application should be weighted towards professional endeavors given that I've only been working for ~9 months?

How much of my co-curric should be weighted towards what I did in college?

I also have a degree in science, do I need to explain this in any way on my application?

I basically took the last semester off (I only took one class. Should I be addressing this "hole" in my academic career?")

Thanks!
jeremy

[MBAApply]

Apply to 4-6 schools max -- apply to too many and you dilute your efforts across too many schools. As someone who is younger, the key thing adcoms are looking for is your maturity (your question is too broad to answer in simple response). As for the nature of your other questions, you're getting into application positioning specifics which is precisely what I provide for clients - moreover, most of the short answer responses to your questions are "it depends" -- it really varies by individual.

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com