Ryura

I'd check out Notre Dame, as well as Chicago Divinity's Philosophy of Religion program.

I'm interested in Descartes, but not really any other modern thinkers.

Make sure there's also a section for "weird circumstances." I was in a bit of a weird spot: I did two years at one school, transferred, and graduated in one year from my new school.

Yes, it just depends on the venue of the book review. If you're interested in philosophy of religion or philosophical theology, Hope Theological Book Review often has books on those topics and allows undergrads to review.

NDPR is a special case, since it's the elite of the elite of book reviews. I think it's highly unlikely that any PhD students would be chosen for an NDPR review (note that the reviews are commissioned by NDPR). In one of the Leiter polls NDPR came out at somewhere like the 20th-30th top philosophy journal - the prestige is certainly worth listing.

Is there a reason why you think the PhD program wouldn't help with (1) and (3), but an MA would? Certainly the coursework of the PhD program will expose you to relevant contemporary discussions and issues as well as prepare you for graduate level writing and research.

This Leiter post is relevant to the idea of transferring: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/08/transferring-phd-programs-twice.html Most people there sounded fine with transferring Ph.D. programs; a large number didn't even find transferring twice problematic.

As far as I understand it, they're obligated to keep their offer to you up to April 15 assuming they don't learn something new about your credentials - e.g., you faked your transcript or something. Schools understand that people will want to consider multiple offers; they're not going to think less of you.

For what it's worth, the status remains submitted after being rejected, but if you click on "2014" you might be greeted by a "status update."

Have you logged into the website (https://apply-humanities.uchicago.edu/apply/) and checked there?

As far as your second point, it's probably not true that SPEP schools don't have good analytic scholars. Fordham and Loyola are both ranked in the PGR for epistemology; Fordham for philosophy of religion; Oregon and Loyola for applied ethics; and so on. Actually, over half of Fordham's hires since 2000 have been analytic according to http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/11/29/Graduate-School-Placements-in-Philosophy-Continental-Programs-Job-Type-Placements.aspx but I doubt there's any question as to Fordham's status as SPEP. (Yes, I am biased and trying to defend Fordham).

Well, no, considering the rankings are only a reflection of overall faculty quality and not of placement.

Have to disagree with this. Yes, if your BA isn't from a well regarded school, you should apply to MA programs. But why would you not throw out at least a few PhD applications? There are plenty of people here, myself included, who went to absolute no-name schools and yet got into decent PhD programs. Even if you get into a non-ranked program, you can always try to transfer to another program after earning the MA at that non-ranked program. My advice, then, is to keep many options open. Apply to PhD programs, apply to MA programs, apply abroad, apply in the US and Canada, etc. But fit seems very important, and I think I underestimated the role of fit in my own application process. I don't think it's a coincidence that I got accepted to my best fit and nowhere else, and I see now that there were schools that I would have a close fit to that I didn't apply to, and I regret that.

For what it's worth, if you really would like to visit and meet with professors, why not email them and tell them your situation? It's possible that they'll encourage you to visit anyway.