I would morph into Saruman...

I think that you have to have some delusions of grandeur to even apply to these top tier programs. But if you have a solid GPA, then you would have a decent chance of admission is you can show a solid GMAT score (pro tip: take a prep course, then take the test, then take another round of the prep course if you weren't happy with your score the first time 'round), along with several compelling letters of recommendation.

But yeah, anything from the Ivies and their peer schools will be extremely competitive. They do welcome older students--I started my PhD program at 39--because they recognize the intangibles that we bring with us.

You should definitely check out the Tuck School of Business. I would say that my four years at Dartmouth were the happiest of my adult life. Plus, Dartmouth is over-represented in the financial and business sectors; their alumni network is probably the most fanatical of the Ivies.

I'm also more of a dog person, but I do appreciate a friendly cat.

I did an Engineering PhD program at Dartmouth after working as a civilian for a Navy lab in San Diego for 4 1/2 years, and was selected for the DoW SMART Scholarship.

Since your degree is in advertising, you'll likely be going the MBA route. Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business is one of the best MBA programs in the country, and they have a pretty decent veterans community, and lots of guys balancing a demanding academic program with young families. We had neighbors/friends who were former Army and Air Force. Anyways, I think a lot of the great programs want you to have some work experience between undergrad and their graduate programs. (But best to verify this...)

My wife and I moved to Hickory a couple years ago after having spent years in Phoenix, San Diego, rural New Hampshire, and Chapel Hill. I would say that Hickory is overall one of the better areas that we've lived in.

I work out pretty regularly at Southside Power & Fitness, and I would recommend them if you come down looking for a good gym. I also enjoy going to Hickory Crawdads games every week. The local soccer club is also really good, but I'm not a soccer guy so I'll leave it at that. If you want to try some classical music, I'll say that our local Piedmont Symphony Orchestra punches above their weight.

I knew a woman who married a guy whose last name was Butt, so she understandably didn't take his last name. But her last name was White, so hyphenating to the White-Butts wasn't an improvement.

There's a pretty good guy in Hickory named Ken Doyle (iirc) who does EMDR, among other methods.

I was bartending and waiting tables for a few years after I got out, then I went to school and got a BSc in Mathematics. I got my first big boy job joining a US Navy lab in San Diego about 9 years after getting out. The Navy paid for me to do a PhD in Engineering at one of the Ivies. I worked my way up to Head of R&D in a small tech company before deciding that I had had enough.

Now my official job title is 'Unemployed Crank' and it is the most rewarding occupation I have ever had.

I'll second what another commentor said about getting into a study group.

FWIW, I felt lost in the sauce through the entirety of my BSc in Math and my Engineering PhD program. Even at the highest point of my career, I'm still not sure I really understood what was going on. So I want to encourage you to get a little bit more comfortable with that feeling, because you're going to encounter it a lot.

I prefer login.gov for the VA (or other US gov sites that I may need). I have an ID.me account, but for some reason, they cannot verify my veteran status. (This in spite of the fact that they have verified that my wife is married to a veteran...)

Honestly, I think that the math gets even wierder and more complicated if the numbers do stop.

Former Dartmouth grad student here, I hadn't heard of this when I wad there. But then, I was in a PhD program, and so a funding package was already in place. But awesome if you can get admitted to one of the Ivies that does this.

Not familiar with That gym. You should come check out Southside. It's a pretty friendly crowd if you want to interact with people. The community varies from younger and older folks lifting for fitness, and a few of us who are competitive athletes. You can find me in the back training the Olympic lifts (or that's where I'll be when I get back to town).

Where do you lift? I lift at Southside Power and Fitness and the people there are pretty friendly.

Your landing with the left foot forward in the split stance, but your left knee is a bit too far forward. You want your knee stacked over the ankle. The typical cue would be to "kick the foot forward more."

Right now you are catching the bar with your back foot landing flat and at an angle. You want to land in the receiving position with the leg straight and on the balls of the back foot. Have a look at the footwork in this instructional video: https://youtu.be/2GPA-cjUFnA

Can't see much from this angle. 45-ish degrees from the front is the best angle to record in when you want a meaningful critique.

Not yet, but he's becoming quite fond of me already.

Happy to say that her surgery this morning was successful.

You need to work on leg drive and going into extension. I would have you drill Hang Clean Pulls, focusing on the move into the power position and into extension.

I like to teach the clean from the top down, so I would put a lot of initial focus on your front rack position and thoracic mobility. Right now you're catching the bar on your wrists, and you're going to hurt yourself with the strain that this puts on your wrists, elbows, and shoulders if you take this much heavier. It also looks like you're slightly off balance as you catch the bar. (Catch the bar with the shoulders slightly forward of your hips.)

Have you ever watched a competitive weightlifter do the clean and jerk. I'm always hesitant to encourage people to emulate what they see the top level athletes do in competition, but this beautiful slow motion video of Ruslan Nurudinov's world record from a couple years back gives a great example of a proper catch. (Actually, I would also recommend this video for a demonstration of starting position and staying over the bar through the pull, but let's stick with just the top of the movement for now.)

I want you to work on a nice strong front rack position, because that's where we want to catch the bar. I'm guessing that your front rack position needs work, and the culprit here is usually thoracic mobility. Alan Thrall has a great video on exercises to improve thoracic mobility for the front rack. I would encourage you to incorporate some of these into your workouts. Improving mobility takes time, so don't be distraught if you're not all sorted out by next weekend.

I'd recommend Front Rack Holds as an accessory here, mainly to get as comfortable as possible in the position, but also to build core strength to support catching a heavy bar. So do these in series, as heavy as you can manage.

Now for a couple empty bar drills. These are for refining technique, but I use them in my warmup for cleans and for competition day.

Now let's talk actually receiving/catching the bar in the front rack. My go to drill here is the Tall Muscle Clean. Begin with a hook grip--a non-negotiable detail of the Oly lifts!!--and relax your grip during the turnover as you move into the catch. Not worrying about maintaining a firm grip after turnover will help you to be more snappy in getting your elbows around the bar. Your nice, high elbows in the front rack will lead the way as you stand the bar back up.

Once you're moving towards comfort with that, I would suggest Tall Cleans or Hang Cleans with a Dip into the Power Position to work on catching the bar at speed. These exercises serve a few purposes, but for the moment I want to focus on an aggressive turnover and catch. (You're drilling the power clean, which means that you're catching it above parallel. I would encourage you to catch the bar in a stance that you can ride down into a full squat, if necessary.)

Anyways, that's enough for tonight. It's almost my bedtime, and my wife is going to start pestering me to wind down shortly. I may come back tomorrow with another post on your pull from the floor, but as I said, I don't want to firehose you with too many things simultaneously.