Griswald

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great (online) resource, and it's free. Each entry is written by a professional philosopher who is an expert on the entry's topic. And the bibliographies are usually quite good, so you can use those for further reading references. I usually prefer the SEP to introductory textbooks, and most philosophers that I know use the SEP whenever they start to learn about a new area.
Looking now, there are entries on Consequentialism, Deontological Ethics, Contractualism, Feminist Ethics, and Virtue Ethics, which would collectively provide a nice introduction to normative ethics. They also have an entry on Metaethics. As for applied ethics, there are many entries that look interesting: Business Ethics, Theory and Bioethics, Ethics of Stem Cell Research, Feminist Bioethics, and many more.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a great (online) resource, and it's free. Each entry is written by a professional philosopher who is an expert on the entry's topic. And the bibliographies are usually quite good, so you can use those for further reading references. I usually prefer the SEP to introductory textbooks, and most philosophers that I know use the SEP whenever they start to learn about a new area.
Looking now, there are entries on Consequentialism, Deontological Ethics, Contractualism, Feminist Ethics, and Virtue Ethics, which would collectively provide a nice introduction to normative ethics. They also have an entry on Metaethics. As for applied ethics, there are many entries that look interesting: Business Ethics, Theory and Bioethics, Ethics of Stem Cell Research, Feminist Bioethics, and many more.

That's a conventional implicature. A conversational implicature is something you do based on contextual factors and understanding of conventions in conversation. It's like rule-following according to pragmatics. A conventional implicature, on the other hand, is what is expressed beyond the content of what is said in virtue of the conversational conventions.

I don't mean to be pedantic either, it's just that a lot of people confuse the two.

Source: Scott Soames' Philosophical Essays *Presupposition), Essay I (footnote).

Hey buddy: you're not 'a lot of people,' you're a person; the attribution of confusion wasn't directed at you. It was a general comment directed at people who haven't heard a lot about Gricean implicatures except in passing. Come on: don't just presuppose that something is perfectly obvious in philosophy, even for philosophers. Remember: to most people, we don't make much sense. It's like that dailynous post that went up maybe a week ago. In that post, Justin asks philosophers to remember that professors of philosophy are so unique in their interest in academia that they pursue philosophy in universities, and that's weird. (The point being that no, you were not perfectly obvious with what you meant).

As a 2nd year PhD student, my advice is: don't underestimate the importance of a department's being interested in its graduate students. Many programs, even top ones, simply aren't; and grad students suffer for it. I think that x's courting you counts strongly in its favor, though it's not decisive, of course. Try not to settle on a program until you've visited both places and talked with the students there.

As a 2nd year PhD student, my advice is: don't underestimate the importance of a department's being interested in its graduate students. Many programs, even top ones, simply aren't; and grad students suffer for it. I think that x's courting you counts strongly in its favor, though it's not decisive, of course. Try not to settle on a program until you've visited both places and talked with the students there.

Of the reputable MA programs in the US that I'm aware of, none would require that you take more undergraduate courses before being admitted. Many MAs (in the US) explicitly welcome applications from people in your situation, with some exposure to philosophy but with undergraduate degrees in other fields. If you don't have letter writers from professional philosophers, however, then I would advise you to take some classes (you could just audit; I did this) with the aim of impressing the instructors enough that they'd be willing to write for you.
That's speaking more towards graduate school applications though, and your question was about preparing for graduate school. Here, my advice is: read as much as possible in your areas of interest, but also take time to read outside your areas; write often, seek feedback, and revise; learn skills that are relevant to your areas of interest (e.g. foreign languages, mathematics, sciences).

I'm revising my attitude re: the Penn State interview. I didn't blow any minds and I showed a lot of my weaknesses but it was an honest representation of my abilities. I'm glad they saw my weaknesses. If they do decide to admit me then I will know they believe I am qualified to study with them (flaws and all)--not just the manicured version of me that they see on paper. 

Waitlisted at Indiana HPS. I guess they don't admit unless they can fund or something. I was excited to see an email from my POI. Last year I was rejected from 15 schools, so this feels amazing.

My bad. I didn't know that the point of these diversity questions was to move others with stories of my struggles. I'll try harder next time to make me seem more worthy of those fellowships. 

Right, those are historical figures. Who writes the articles about them that you read?

I can say a bit, though I'm no expert. 

Your personal statement is a good time to show that you're a good fit for the department. Your sample should prove that you can do high-quality philosophy, but your statement should prove you will be able to work with the faculty at Whatever University. Because of that, I would say you want to be fairly specific in your description of your interests (e.g. don't  just say "philosophy of language", because the subfield is pretty broad). If you aren't specific enough, then the department might think your interests aren't fleshed out and that you don't really know what you want to do. At the same time, don't be too specific (e.g. don't say "I am primarily interested in Donald Davidson's philosophy of language"). This is because, if you're too specific, a department might think you're too set on some particular topic and not open to change. 

One way to get around this is to say something like: "My main area of interest is philosophy of mind. More specifically, I am interested in the philosophy of perception, including non-visual kinds of perception. My writing sample is an example of this interest: I argue that considering non-visual kinds of perception provides further support for a non-conceptualist view."

(Disclaimer: I know next to nothing about philosophy of mind or perception.) 

I think that saying something like this would work well—it shows you know the subfield better than just saying "I like philosophy of mind", and it shows that you've thought about some specific topics (like non-visual perception) while situating it in the subfield more broadly (by drawing connections to the debate about non-conceptual content). But notice that it didn't get too specific, and that it stops short of endorsing a particular view—as a rule, don't explicitly endorse positions in your statement (save that for your sample).

You should ask the department that offered you admission exactly what "waitlisted for TAship" means. It's unclear as stated whether you can assume a tuition waiver.
 
The salient difference between these two results is that you now can choose to attend the first university, possibly without funding, whereas it's still possible that you will be rejected by the second university. If you can afford to pay your own way through the program at the first university, this is very good news. If you can't, and if the funding doesn't come through, then you will be forced to either decline the offer or find another source of funding, such as external fellowships or loans.

Attending UConn

I've made my final decision. (Following DontFly's format:)
 
Will attend: UNC Chapel Hill
 
Total programs applied: 12
Declined offer/wait list (WL): UW Madison (WL); Georgetown (WL-funding); UW Milwaukee; Tufts; WashU.
Visited: UNC Chapel Hill and WashU
 
AOI: Hume, ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, and epistemology
GRE (taken in 2014): verbal (159/ 81%); quantitative (152/ 53%); writing (5.0/ 92(?)%)
Background: Undergraduate degree form a large state university and McNair Scholars Program

No decision you make at this point will "secure" you placement in a top PhD program, so you needn't worry about that. Also, I'm puzzled by your judgment that GSU's program doesn't fit your interests. It's well known that the program there is quite strong in philosophy of mind. Anyway, my own opinion is that you should allow for the possibility that your interests may change during your MA.

Accepted at UConn!!! It feels so good, especially after last year's shut out. I hope to see you overoverover and reixis there!

Tough decision. Regarding the consideration that UMSL is close to WUSTL, let me chime in with just one piece of advice, on the assumption that you plan on applying to PhD programs. While working with faculty at WUSTL may be intellectually rewarding for you, be careful not to overestimate the value that that will have when it comes to PhD applications. In my experience, having gone through an MA, the most important thing is doing really well in your program. Sometimes (not always, but often enough) students who pursue too much stuff outside of their department end up stretching themselves too thin and extra-departmental activities end up having and adverse effect. A two year MA goes by really quickly--you'll need to start thinking about your PhD applications during your first summer. It's hard enough to forge good relationships with faculty in your home department in that time, let alone make meaningful connections in other departments. Admittedly, I don't know much about the situation at UMST and WUSTL, but I will say that the most successful MA students that I know put most of their effort into doing really well in their home departments (i.e. standing out in seminar discussions, writing excellent term papers/writing samples/theses) and tended to minimize extra-departmental activities.

Tough decision. Regarding the consideration that UMSL is close to WUSTL, let me chime in with just one piece of advice, on the assumption that you plan on applying to PhD programs. While working with faculty at WUSTL may be intellectually rewarding for you, be careful not to overestimate the value that that will have when it comes to PhD applications. In my experience, having gone through an MA, the most important thing is doing really well in your program. Sometimes (not always, but often enough) students who pursue too much stuff outside of their department end up stretching themselves too thin and extra-departmental activities end up having and adverse effect. A two year MA goes by really quickly--you'll need to start thinking about your PhD applications during your first summer. It's hard enough to forge good relationships with faculty in your home department in that time, let alone make meaningful connections in other departments. Admittedly, I don't know much about the situation at UMST and WUSTL, but I will say that the most successful MA students that I know put most of their effort into doing really well in their home departments (i.e. standing out in seminar discussions, writing excellent term papers/writing samples/theses) and tended to minimize extra-departmental activities.

Tough decision. Regarding the consideration that UMSL is close to WUSTL, let me chime in with just one piece of advice, on the assumption that you plan on applying to PhD programs. While working with faculty at WUSTL may be intellectually rewarding for you, be careful not to overestimate the value that that will have when it comes to PhD applications. In my experience, having gone through an MA, the most important thing is doing really well in your program. Sometimes (not always, but often enough) students who pursue too much stuff outside of their department end up stretching themselves too thin and extra-departmental activities end up having and adverse effect. A two year MA goes by really quickly--you'll need to start thinking about your PhD applications during your first summer. It's hard enough to forge good relationships with faculty in your home department in that time, let alone make meaningful connections in other departments. Admittedly, I don't know much about the situation at UMST and WUSTL, but I will say that the most successful MA students that I know put most of their effort into doing really well in their home departments (i.e. standing out in seminar discussions, writing excellent term papers/writing samples/theses) and tended to minimize extra-departmental activities.

Waitlisted at UConn, with "pretty reasonable" chance of admission.

Well it's Pittsburgh for me! Just accepted their offer.

It's not automatic - I would've been happy to go there if I didn't get in to some of my other places. But mainly because the research interests of the department don't line up as well with mine as the others. Georgetown seems to cover German philosophy with much wider scope and context (a good thing, in my eyes), and it would be amazing to work with Pinkard, since I tend to focus on Hegel in terms of history. UCSD doesn't have a big-name Hegel scholar like Georgetown does (though they do now have Allais who focuses more on Kant, and who would be great to work with), but they have some really cool interaction between history/German Idealism and logic, in Tolley and Sher. Tolley is probably the person whose interests line up best with mine at any university.
 
In terms of JHU, I think Forster's work is great, and they do have a Hegel person in Moyar (though he tends to be more on the social/political side), and I like Michael Williams's work on skepticism. But in general, UCSD and Georgetown seem to be increasing their focus on the convergence of things like German Idealism and epistemology/logic, while JHU seems a bit weaker in each and less focused on the convergence.
 
Also, I grew up in Maryland and spent a fair amount of time in Baltimore, and I really would rather not spend the better part of a decade living in Baltimore. But this isn't to say that JHU isn't a great place, or even that it isn't a great place for my interests.

Of course not, Eigen. I guess I've seen (in other forums) people refer to the "moderator". You're the only moderator with whom I've interacted on this site, and I've posted 500+ times. I mean absolutely nothing personal by my reaction to your comments.
 
But as I said above, you dropped in on the discussion -- and it's the only time I've seen you here, and you happen to be a moderator -- and then suggested that we have acted unethically. (This is implied by your suggestion that the information is "considered confidential." What else could it mean to violate confidentiality? That's why several have taken issue with the suggestion that someone has been untrustworthy.)

Do you see how, in this context, your post could come off the wrong way to those you have suggested acted unethically? It's not like you're on here interacting with us all of the time, offering your views here and there. It feels like you implicitly used your status as moderator to warrant a claim about our ethics. We had 53 responses last year to our survey about funding, and we have over 20 so far this year. Maybe you just felt particularly compelled in this situation, in which case it was all unintended on your part. I mean nothing personal. I just mean to point out how your post feels to me in this context. After all, you have called into question my ethics.

Is the rhetorical ploy really that obscure to you, or are yours just that heavy-handed?