Guys, thank you in advance for reading. First I'll lay out my goal and then my profile.
GOAL
Would like to attend some "prestigious" university's PhD program in Statistics, Operations Research, Management Science, Finance or whatever else will allow me to study stats, computing, and a particular subject of application. In my case, since I don't plan to do academic research after the PhD, the grad school does not need to be exceptional in the minds of academics, but rather it should be exceptional in the minds of business people and other poorly informed individuals. For example, many people on this forum have discussed how great NCSU's Stats program is; a degree from there would be almost a hindrance during job placement whereas a degree from a less highly-ranked program, say, UPenn's (assuming UPenn's Stats department is not as good as NCSU's) would enable me to go much farther with ease.
PROFILE
In reverse chronological
GRE: 800Q, 740V, 4.5AWAGraduated 4 years ago and have been working mostly in the front office at a very large Investment Bank. Some of the experience could be made to look directly relevant to Stats, as there was use of time series, optimization, and Monte Carlo at times.Undergraduate was Applied Math at Berkeley, with a lot of classes in Stats (2 at the Graduate level). Grades were poor. I have two W's (need to get transcript to be certain), so my overall GPA Is probably 3.0 or so. Was transfer student to Berkeley from Ohio State, if relevant.Have 2 years of decent Putnam results (top 10%)Have no undergraduate research experience.Most importantly, did not secure any faculty recommendations, and don't think I could do so now. My employer recommendations should be very good, and they are from people that I have worked with for two years.
QUESTIONS
[*]Given my grades and profile otherwise, what is the range of schools to which it makes sense to apply given my motivations?[*]Should I instead be applying to Masters programs? Presumably I could do well there and have a better shot at applying to "good" PhD programs.[*]Does it makes sense to take 1 or more classes this Fall to secure faculty recommendations? Does the caliber of the institution weigh a lot on the recommendation? Reason I ask is because I live next door to CUNY Baruch, which is very inexpensive and has recently amassed some well-respected guys in Financial Math.[*]Would taking the Math GRE be a good idea, assuming that it would be possible to prepare for it to get a good score?
Thank you in advance for reading all this, and I appreciate any input you have!