Need Guidance in building my profile

mba_sailor,

Thanks for your post.

I'll review each of the sections of your background and suggest ways for you to enhance your profile over the coming year.

For the Academics section, graduating with a quantitative degree from a strong university will be a strength to your application, but it appears your GPA is below the average for top business schools. If you did not graduate in the First Class or First Class with Distinction, then I suggest you consider supplementing your transcript with a couple part-time business courses. UCLA Extension offers online courses that could be done while you are travelling. Taking a couple classes like economics or finance and scoring an "A" will help demonstrate your abilities and interest in business education.
The GMAT score will be another important part of the academics section. I suggest targeting at least the school average for your target schools, with an 80+% on both the verbal and math sections.

For the Work Experience section, showing career progression and increase in responsibilities will be important. So over the next year, I suggest looking for any opportunities to demonstrate your people and project management abilities and formal increases in title and compensation.

Extracurricular activities are the third important section to your application. Again, opportunities to demonstrate leadership are important. This will be more difficult given your travel schedule, but continuing to run your news aggregation website and seeking out any other ways to be involved will be helpful.

I don't think the writing degree will be relevant to MBA admissions.

Hope that helps!

Heidi