Preliminary Advice on Business School

Hello all,

I am a senior Econ major at a top 20 non-Ivy university (think Emory, Vandy, Georgetown) with a 3.5 gpa (white male btw). I just accepted a job at a low-tier bulge bracket investment bank (BoAML, UBS, Citi) in a Capital Markets Group. I think I will be able to do pretty well on my GMAT (I got a little over 2100 (1400 old score) on my SAT and will prepare much more for this), but not totally ace it. To be honest though, I don't have any really good extra-curriculars or anything particularly interesting about me, haha.

My career goal is probably to stay in banking (hopefully in consumer products), with private equity and F500 corporate finance as the other possibilities - more interested in deals and companies than portfolio management and investing. I want to live in the northeast in the long run, probably New York because that's where all the jobs are. The reason that I would go to bschool is to take a break from the grind of banking, help advance myself in banking, and to give me flexibility if I want to do something else/ readdress if I want to do something else...it just seems like a good overall experience, even if it doesn't make financial sense.

I would love to go to HBS, Wharton, or Columbia, but given that I'm a fairly generic candidate, I'm realistically interested in Stern, Tuck, Darden, Fuqua, Johnson, and Ross.

My questions:

1. Besides killing the GMAT, are there other steps that I could be taking now to help myself out with all this?
2. My gpa could end up anywhere between a 3.4 and a 3.6 - kind of a question without a definite answer, but how much does it really matter?
3. Given my story and where I am trying to go, what should I shoot for on the GMAT? Furthermore, what is the best tutoring service I can hire to get me that score?
4. Kind of tough to answer w/o my gmat score, but are those schools realistic/ good choices? Considering that I think I want to be in the northeast, I think it's smart to go to schools where the network is there (for both recruiting and for afterwards). My thinking is why go to a Chicago or West Coast school when I could go to a school of equal prestige that lends itself better to a career in the northeast...am I right on that?

Thanks in advance for the help, I really appreciate it.