Hello
I am interested in PhD public policy. I have 161 V & 156 Q AWA 4.0 (expected), 5 years experience in central Bank in south east asia in Banking supervision and policy/regulation. Before that i did MBA from local university with 3.26/5.0, First division in B.A with economics and psychology.
Please Advice me which universities in USA i should be targeting. And yes, i didnt undertook research during education, however, written some policy briefs job which would be my writing sample.

Please advise, thanking you guys in anticipation!

Most people on here are from the UK and in any case, you need to narrow down your search a bit before people can advise you. Think of where in the US you want to be, or come up with a list of unis yourself and look at the info on their graduate web pages.

Hi, common sense tells me i should be targeting US 50+ ranked universities like UT Dallas, South Carolina, Colorado boulder and universities generally considered 50+ in US domestic ranking. About UK PhD, what do you think about research proposal requirement about admission, how to go about that?

Are you looking for funding? Do you know if your scores are competitive?

In the UK, you do much the same as in the US, write a proposal and send it to a suitable supervisor and see if they have any funding or see if they can apply for funding. Or you look on findaphd.com for projects that already come with funding, but most are only funded for UK/EU students.

This is my source to assume that scores are competitive, and USA somehow places lot of emphasis on GRE unlike UK and European universities which demands proposal prior to admission and any major research training-they assume you know what you want to research, know methodology and research design and statistical analysis-Australian universities are most unreasonable in this case.
And i definitely want funding.

I have read about lot of universities and applied in a few in USA. They dont want "In principal" approval or supervisor blessing during application process. Btw, Tree of life is one of my fav movies. Good taste.