Reapplying/Transfer, PhD in Management?

[Akilae]

Hi! After lurking around, I'm in need of some advice/insight/feedback... anything to help me decide!

I applied to a series of schools for Fall 2008, and so far have only gotten accepted to a Top 20-30 school, and decision pending at a Top 20. Rejected at all the Top 10-20 schools I applied to (The usual suspects of NYU, Columbia, Cornell, etc...).

GMAT scores: V40 (89%), Q45 (77%), Essay 6.0. Top 10 Undergrad. Foreign MBA. 2 yrs work experience in related field. Some pubs.

Right now I'm weighting the possibilities of re-app. My chosen field, Management/OB, is enough of a "minority" field that school prestige carries a lot of weight. I don't mean that it's a unpopular field, but rather to succeed attachment to specific professors is important, and most of them happen to be in Top 20 schools at the very least.

I was told by some profs and adcoms that my pubs and research experience so far are "interesting and attractive". I'll be the first to admit I screwed up my application, such as poor GMAT score, which was below the mean to most Top 20 schools, and I could rewrite my LOI to be even better. I was also told straight up that "taking and doing well on the GRE would send a very strong signal".

IF I accept admission to the current school, I'll be spending time from now until summer to beef up for the GRE, networking heavily with profs in prospective schools get new LORs, and rewrite my LOI. I will be re-applying for Fall 2009 to Top 20 schools, and from what I've been told, Top 10 is a possibility if I can polish my application even more.

The main thing stopping me from just taking a year off to re-app is most of my current profs in my grad school strongly advised against having any sort of blank period. The amount of my pubs so far have made it so that just one more won't make a terrible difference unless it's in a top tier journal, which is impossible. They feel it's worth just transferring out after the first year. However, none of them are in the US academic network, so I'm not sure if what they think would hold water across the ocean.

Has anybody ever heard of people transferring/reapplying immediately within the first year? Would it be insane? Would I forever be marked as a pariah and an "untouchable" within academia? I really, really want to go to a better than Top 30 school, and be able to learn from the best! ANY feedback/advise would be VERY much appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

[docstudent]

It sounds to me like your test score is what's holding you back. How many times have you taken the GMAT? If only once, you should retake that first. Perhaps you just had a bad day when you took it the first time. Speaking from a n of 1, I improved 130 points my second time (exceeding the 90th percentile).