so this is a very complicated situation, I am an Italian citizen currently in Italy, I have been in the US several times on several visas: F1, J1, visa waiver program. I've never overstayed and always followed the rules. My last visa was an F1 followed by one year of OPT. Currently I am a contractor for a US company, I do not receive a W-2, they made me fill out a W8-ben.
Since I've completed a master in computer science at a US university in December of 2008, I'm now planning to apply to a PhD program, I need to spend a good amount of time in the US to visit schools, attend conferences, but also do some traveling which I never had time for when I was a student and of course spending time with my friends. this trip is not related at all to my work, my employer doesn't care where i am when i work.
I would like to go there with the visa waiver program for october-december, then return home and stay here for a month and a half and apply for a B-1/B-2 visa. And if I get it try to stay 6 months from Feb-july. I would like to know if I could run into problems either at the embassy when I apply for the visa or at the port of entry. Should I even mention anything about this job? it sounds like it might mess up the whole application because they might not understand that it has nothing to do with the purpose of my visit. Also I am concerned about applying for a B2 visa shortly after coming back from my visa waiver stay.
Does anybody have any suggestions, ideas or previous experience. I'm not sure how to go about this.
Thanks a lot for your time.

