I wanted to know which colleges in USA are good for placements in the retail industries and financial services industries.
I am a 24 year old engineering graduate with 2 and a half years work experience in the consulting industry. My undergrad gpa is relatively low at 7.67 out of 10 although I hope 725 GMAT score could do a bit of damage control.

A couple of colleges that I was planning on applying to :
Carnegie Mellon
UCLA
Rochester
Pepperdine
UCSD

The dilemma is that I'm not sure how any of the colleges stand in terms of opportunities in the retail or financial industries and thats what I'm aiming for.

http://find-mba.com/lists/top-business-school-by-speciality/top-business-schools-for-a-career-in-retail-and-consumer-goods

That's a good list. However, there's not much overlap between that and the schools that are good for financial services. Broadly speaking, this is geographic: the financial services jobs are in cities like Chicago, New York, etc., so Columbia, NYU, Wharton, Booth will be good to place here.

Looking at that retail lists, the US schools there like Carlson are usually in places where there are a lot of headquarters for retail stores.

UNC might be a good option, since it places well into both fields.

What I see could be an issue for you is your work experience: most of the schools we're discussing here recruit candidates with around 5 years of work experience, on average.

Yes I do realize that I lack work experience. Sadly I'm sort of left with no choice here..

Wharton, NYU Stern and Booth were the first schools I looked into. But they seem like a shot in the dark for me considering my profile don't they? Even UNC for that matter.

What if I were to consider schools like Rochester, Zicklin, Liataud, Pepperdine, etc? If being in the cities would give me an edge.

I would be a bit more optimistic, especially if you focus on retail rather than finance. That would make you a more interesting candidate and would make the 725 GMAT look better in comparison. I agree that UNC is a great school to target.

Oxford is on the top ten list I posted earlier, and I think that would be very interesting. Minnesota and Wisconsin are solid too.

Probably. But like Razors Edge pointed out I do lack work experience nonetheless. Also, I was reading through your post on 'GMAT Tiers ' (which was quite informative by the way) and felt like I would be at a slight disadvantage being an Indian IT engineering graduate with a smidgen of work experience. Which I guess brings me down Tier 3.
UNC, Wisconsin and Minnesota may be difficult to get into.

Ideally NYU Stern was the school I was interested in for its location in NYC and rankings but I guess thats out of reach for me as well

Maybe a MS degree would be easier to get into, like at Columbia?

Yes maybe but won't that be more focused on finance? Which university would recommend as safety schools? For MBA that is.

Columbia has an MS in marketing, which might be good for retail.

Safe schools.... I'd say the bottom of tier three: http://board.find-mba.com/gmat/gmat-tiers-strong-schools-for-your-gmat-23247

Also, it depends on what you want to do in the retail industry.

Managing an outlet takes a much different skillset than if you're in the home office doing accounting or marketing, etc.

I mostly wish to work in the retail buyer or retail merchandising fields.