Hey Pat - well first thing is you've got some interesting experiences in your background! And you have a good reason for wanting to go for the MBA. There's a lot of excellent choices in the Chicago area, as you have noted, and the EMBA adcoms will likely appreciate a lot of what they see in your history; you've got plenty to talk about in the essays! (We were a little nervous when we first saw the "Sales" thing in your title - salespeople sometimes have a tough time in coming up with good stories of leadership and achievement for essay topics - but you clearly have done much more than "just" sales!! you should have lots to draw on with your startups etc.)
You should try for the best-regarded program you can, provided it otherwise meets your needs re: scheduling etc. We know that Kellogg doesn't require the GMAT for the EMBA (we talked about that on our blahg before:
https://essaysnark.com/2011/05/no-gmat-required/ ). Chicago Booth may grant a waiver on the GMAT but they usually prefer to get one, particularly if there's not a huge amount of obvious quant work in the career history. We're not sure how they'd respond to your background but they might want to see a GMAT score. Your econ degree helps, maybe that would be enough for them, dunno. Their class scheduling may not work for you so this whole thing might be moot anyway. But it's a great school and an excellent program so we'd encourage you to consider it if you can.
Another you might consider - not sure if it makes sense to do a commuting thing to the EMBA but maybe it could work - is the Cornell EMBA. No GMAT required. We wrote about it here:
https://essaysnark.com/2011/06/no-gmat-required-part-2/
If you're committed to starting school ASAP, then we'd suggest you apply for all your school choices together in their next rounds. (Usually we recommend a more staggered approach where you would try for first choice schools first and see what happens...) Doing them in a big-bang approach would be intense but you'd want to have an assortment of targets in the mix to make sure that one of them worked out. You'd likely have an easy time getting in somewhere like Notre Dame EMBA (provided your app is solid of course!) only due to the fact that they get fewer candidates overall and especially for these programs. If you were also accepted to a better-ranked school like Kellogg, then you'd have some choices, yet you'd still be covered with a backup plan.
Anyway, hope this helps. The best way to figure out if a school is a good fit is to visit, and lots of the EMBA admissions offices invite candidates to come in and talk to them about their interests and goals, so you'd likely have a very warm reception from any of these places. Talk to current students too. That will help you make your choices.
Keep us posted as you go and good luck with it!
EssaySnark
