Prospective MS OR or Stat applicant Fall 2018 - Profile eval + Advice

[iceman007]

Hey

New gradcafe user and prospective MS applicant for an MS in Operations Research / Statistics / Management Science for Fall 2018. 

Please evaluate my profile and whether I'm being too ambitious/do I stand a chance here? Key features of my profile - Low undergrad GPA, high quant GRE score, related work ex

Here's my profile followed by an initial university shortlist

GRE 324 - Q 166 (91st percentile)  V 158 (80th percentile) (Might give again to offset low undergrad GPA)
TOEFL - Yet to give
Undergrad CGPA - 6.3/10 from the National Institute of Technology Warangal in Mechanical Engg - Top 10 India for engineering
Work Experience - 3 years
1.5 years - Data Analyst for a Fortune 200 MNC (1 promotion) + 3 good projects - Quantitative Sales/Marketing analytics
1.5 years - Senior Analyst for a Loyalty Card company (jump in designation from previous org)
Fair amount of projects on quantitative modelling work
Research papers/Publications: None

Certifications:
1. SAS certified base programmer
2. SAS certified statistical business analyst: Regression and Modelling
3. Machine Learning from Coursera

Recommendations:
1. HOD from work - ex prof at a premier MBA school in India - Strong
2. Team Leader from previous org - Moderate
3. Professor from college - Moderate

SOP structure: Considering that my weakest point is my undergrad GPA, I'll bring in a point about how I messed up the first year but post that my gpa has been increasing plus ever since starting work I've been really driven and talk about my projects as proof.

Programs I'm looking to apply for: 
1. Statistics (with electives from the CS department) 
2. Operations Research
Not applying for "Analytics" or "Data Science" masters because I feel such programs have breadth but seriously lack depth.

Current university shortlist:
1. Columbia
2. University of Chicago
3. UCLA 
4. Georgia Tech
5. University of Michigan
6. John Hopkins
7. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
8. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
9. Duke
10. Cornell

Questions:
1. What is my profile like?
2. How would you categorise the above universities considering my profile as Safe, Moderate, Ambitious and reasons for the same? 
3. Thoughts on the SOP structure?