Glasperlenspieler

Of what I could quickly find online:
University of California, Riverside (PGR Rank 28): "During the last few years, average GRE scores (verbal and quantitative combined) for students admitted to the Ph.D. program have been in the range of 310 to 330 (1250-1500 by the old scale). (If a student’s combined scores are below 300 (1100), their chances of being admitted are minimal unless there is a special explanation, for example, that the student is not a native speaker of English). Typically a score below 310 (or 1250) is a strike against an applicant, whereas a score above 325 (or 1450) is a bonus." http://philosophy.ucr.edu/about-the-graduate-program/223-2/
Notre Dame (PGR Rank 17):  "There is no automatic cut-off based on GRE scores, but average scores for students admitted recently are: 93rd percentile in verbal; 84th percentile in quantitative; and 87th percentile in analytic." http://philosophy.nd.edu/graduate-program/admissions-and-financial-support/
University of Michigan (PGR Rank 4): No GRE required. http://lsa.umich.edu/philosophy/graduates/prospective-students/admissions-faq.html
Rutgers (PGR Rank 2): "On average GRE scores tend to be very high, around 96% or above, and GPAs tend to be 3.7 or above. But we have accepted students with GREs and GPAs that are significantly lower when other factors are taken into account. You should not be discouraged from applying solely on the grounds that your GREs or GPA is below these markers." http://philosophy.rutgers.edu/graduate-admissions
 
Many programs don't list this info on their sites, but I also didn't see any data too far off from this. I think the moral is that perfect GRE scores won't get you in if you don't have a writing sample and proposed research interests that get the faculty excited. As long as your GRE isn't alarmingly low, however, it will really come down to the other aspects of you application. What counts as alarmingly low, of course, may depend somewhat on the program in question. The key is to make sure that your GRE and GPA are high enough to guarantee that your file gets a close look. My suspicion is that once your verbal is at the 90th percentile or so and your other scores aren't too low, you're up against the law of diminishing returns and your efforts are best focused elsewhere. 
To be clear, this is not meant to give a rosy, "everything will be fine" outlook on graduate admissions. The odds of getting in to a top PhD program are astronomically low, but to think that you can predict this based on the numerical components of the application is a rabbit hole. 
 
 

Here you are: http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/
Also, here is the section of Eric Schwitzgebel's guide that discusses the GRE: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2007/10/applying-to-philosophy-phd-programs_16.html
To be sure, it helps to have good GRE scores. But having good GRE scores is nether necessary nor sufficient for admission. Less-than-great GRE scores can be outweighed by other, more important parts of the application, especially the writing sample. Thus, I would encourage the OP, if s/he is indeed set on undertaking graduate study in philosophy, to focus on writing an excellent sample. If s/he can do so, s/he will have a shot.

Take a look at the admissions results page. There are plenty of people who had worse GRE scores than the OP, and yet were admitted to PGR-ranked programs. Moreover, it's widely agreed on this forum that the GRE is the least important part of one's application -- far less important than one's writing sample and letters of recommendation. (This is also the view of every professor to whom I've talked -- serveral of whom are at top-15 programs). And finally, the OP's GPA is not terrible. Hence, s/he has a reasonable shot at acceptance to a PGR-ranked program, provided the other elements of her/his application are strong.
 
 

I'm of the opinion that you must pursue other interests. I agree with you: that person was exaggerating.
We all need a way to distract ourselves, to turn stress, worries, questions into something productive. I practice sports: I joined two clubs and an intramural team, I go to gym/swim/run, and I even picked up two new sports during my comps/prospectus because it was a way to also learn something new and accompanying the process of intellectual 'acquisition'.
That said, I don't know how serious you can be about an instrument. I know of people how participated in some small performance events because, like you, had a semi-professional past. I also know of people who joined choirs/church bands as a means to channel this. Others collaborated with the performing arts department for fundraisers. I tried to resume piano lessons but they were too pricey for my stipend. I sense you will have to come to grips with the fact that you may not keep up with your professional pace. For example, in my program we don't have any responsibilities in first year other than doing well. That was a great time for me to feel at home doing sports I practiced at home, it was a way of adjusting. During my second year it was harder to keep up with team sports and in my third year it was impossible, hence I picked up individual sports. 
Lay out the five-six years ahead of you and think about your PhD requirements (teaching, coursework, comps, etc). If you know what's happening when, you'll be able to tune the amount of time you devote to your music. But by no means abandon it. 

I can also speak to the virtues of staggering your graduate careers, as I have been the supportive significant other to an overworked and overwhelmed graduate student for the past 7 years. I've learned an immense amount from going through the process vicariously through her and I like to think that I've made her graduate career easier by being present when she needed to vent (or when she needed someone to proofread).

My advice is that you should both go through the application process even if you decide to stagger your entries. Applying to graduate school, unfortunately, has a lot to do with the unadvertised/unknowable circumstances of the departments to which you are applying, and this means that good candidates with strong GPAs and excellent writing samples get shut out due to dumb luck. It's also more competitive than it's ever been as more and more funding gets cut. You both should cast wide nets (7-10 schools) and understand that there are no safety schools. You might both be amazing candidates but your problem might solve itself if neither of you are accepted (most likely) or if only one of you is accepted (likely). If you both are accepted then you can worry about the details of which one of you goes/work out the details of a long distance relationship. Generally speaking, the odds are against acceptance.

I have more bad news for you though... Even in the best case scenario where you both get into your dream programs and you're right down the street from each other/at the same school, the odds that one of you will have to compromise. Google the "Two-Body Problem" then consider that your dilemma is even worse as in order to end up in the same school, you'll have to end up in the same department. Usually, when a University advertises a position, there'll only be funds for one tenure-track position open in the department. Spousal hires are uncommon unless one of you is a rock star, and you or your spouse might be stuck as a lecturer/adjunct for a few years before the Dean can open another TT position. When my fiancee landed her TT gig earlier this year at a small, regional comprehensive, state school, there were 184 applicants, 14 skype interviews, and only 3 or 4 on campus interviews. Things don't get more likely after getting accepted to graduate school. They get vastly less likely.
The GOOD news is that merit plays a role in both graduate and job applications, albeit a limited one. Work your butts off and, hopefully, you can become giants in your respective fields and have departments scrambling to offer you spousal hires. A short story to give you hope:

This past semester, my fiancee's department (part of an R1 and a flagship state institution) was miraculously given the opportunity to conduct two TT searches at the same time. When they offered the first of those positions to a woman, she informed them that she wanted a spousal hire for her husband... who had applied for the second position and was eliminated from consideration early on. She also informed the department that her husband was strongly considering a one-year appointment at Oxford and he had already secured a spousal hire for her--the insinuation being that my fiancee's institution had better sweeten the pot or they'd lose both candidates. The department had scrambled to open enough funds to field competitive salary offers and had to invite him to a belated on campus interview. Another candidate had also accepted the second position, so my fiancee's department had to cash in a future TT line. 

The moral of this story is that if you're enough of a big deal, even in this buyer's market, universities will always scramble to get their candidate, and the big universities will find a way to hire both you and your husband if one of you knocks it out of the park. It can be done! You just have to be, like, the very best.

Hope this helps. Good luck to you on your journey. Support each other and have patience with each other. Know that you'll both change radically. No one leaves graduate school the same person they were when they started.

Certainly! I mainly wanted to point out that it's possible that a paper you're proud of at the moment might not be something that you want publicly associated with your name down the line. My suspicion is that the odds of this are much higher for a paper you wrote during your senior year of undergrad than late in a PhD program or afterwards. There are, however, almost certainly exceptions on either side of this equation. This consideration coupled with the possibility of further refining an idea through added training should, I think, give reason for caution about publishing too early in one's academic career. Obviously though, this is a personal decision and there are a lot of factors that can tip the balance in one direction or the other.
 
Should everyone be polishing until they get into Nous? Depends on what you mean by 'should'. I happen to think it would be better for professional philosophy and intellectual inquiry for people to publish less frequently and more polished pieces. I also recognize that contemporary hiring and tenure policies make this a naive suggestion. Not publishing is simply not an option after a certain point in your academic career. I just happen to think that that point occurs somewhere during a PhD program and not before. 
 
There are a number of interesting discussions of publishing on Leiter and Daily Nous. Here are a couple for what it's worth:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/05/grad-students-questions-about-publishing.html
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/04/publishing-as-an-ma-student-applying-to-phd-programs.html
http://dailynous.com/2014/10/06/how-much-should-graduate-students-publish/
 
I'd be happy to continue a discussion on publishing if people are interested, but at this point it might make the most sense to create a new thread for it and leave this one for more general applicant discussion.
 
 

Non-traditional almost seems like the norm at UCR. (Possibly because non-traditionals stand out a bit, but at the same time it was the only place I visited where my odd background got a "Yeah, we all have odd backgrounds" response.)
 
 
The general rule is have upper-level or grad-level coursework in philosophy. Even if it's just one class to 
1. Get an A and show you can handle it.
2. Get a letter from a philosopher who can say you can handle it.
 
I only published in one undergrad conference proceedings and presented at undergrad conferences. My B.S. came from a school without much of a reputation. (It's a decent program, but I doubt the name was pulling much weight.) Nonetheless, I did get accepted to a top 15 overall philosophy program. If you do a little bit of searching in the subforum, you'll see some threads with stories of even longer shots. A top 10/15/20 program is a long shot for pretty much anyone. I wouldn't say you need to be publishing or speaking to get in, but at the same time, if you can be presenting your work and getting feedback, why aren't you? 
Several studies I've seen (thanks to the philosophy blogosphere being concerned with causal connections between studying philosophy and test scores) say you can't do much to improve your GRE. If you have the time and money, though, it can't hurt, especially since you know where your gaps are. (I was able to remember the problem I missed on the Q section and solved it on my way home. Prompt smack to the forehead.) Look at the averages to the schools you're interested in. At some you're solid. I've seen a few where you'd be at a disadvantage.
As @Glasperlenspieler said, though, fit will matter. Spamming the top ten with little regard for fit is a waste.
 
It's a survey of what many prominent philosophers think regarding which schools have the best faculty. 
The alternative is just asking the philosophers you know which schools are best. You can still do that, though. PGR just gives you an aggregate of what more qualified people think.
This is why finding placement data is important. Last I checked, U of Memphis had a 100% placement rate despite being (iirc) unranked. Reading the part on the website saying what the PGR is measuring is important in using it. Really in using any statistical data, reading what the data is measuring is a good idea.
1. I'd be concerned about anyone who hasn't grown substantially in five years. If you're not getting better each year, what are you doing?
2. Why are there mid-tier journals, then? Shouldn't everyone be polishing until they get into Nous?
The general rule is a letter from a philosopher is better than from a non-philosopher. Though the more damning rule is when more than three can be sent, three good is good. Three good plus one lukewarm may sink you. I would speculate two good letters from philosophers plus a good from religious studies is better than two good philosopher letters and a lukewarm philosopher letter. (This is also usually regarding PhD programs. I will note I know much less about applying to MA programs.)
 

I apologize for being inaccurate about the position of the University of Chicago on the Leiter Report. It was not my intention to report these facts inaccurately.

 
Of course, I would agree with this.

All I'm saying is that most M.A. students have already produced six term papers. Surely one of them is publishable. Maybe other departments are different, but our professors tell us that all of our final papers should be near publishable quality.

I'm also not convinced it's that difficult to produce publishable work. Journals are full of awful articles that don't deserve to be published. The recent Hypatia controversy is proof of how bad articles can be published in well-respected journals.

 

I largely disagree with this advice, or if not disagree, then I would at least emphasize things a little bit differently. The odds of *anyone* getting into a top 15 program are low. I don't think that means you shouldn't apply. I wouldn't worry much about your GPA. If you can keep your MA GPA up that should more or less mitigate concerns about undergrad GPA. Your GREs are fine. Nothing spectacular but not bad. I wouldn't bother retaking it if I were you. I don't think publications really matter. Hardly anyone has a publication applying for PhD programs. If you can get something published in a top journal, that's great and you'll probably be successful in applications, but that's not the norm. Don't try to publish just to publish. At this point in your career, you're probably better off not publishing than publishing in a mid-tier or worse journal. In terms of MA prestige, it certainly doesn't hurt coming from a top program, but you can't do anything about that at this point and people do get into to top programs from unknown programs. 
All this is to say that your stats shouldn't keep you out. You're odds of getting into a top 15 program are low, but that goes for everyone else too. What it will come down to is your writing sample and how strong of a fit you are for the program. If someone on the admissions committee takes a particular liking to your writing sample, you're in. You don't have a lot of control over this and a lot of it is luck. All you can do it produce the best sample you can that showcases your skills and interests, asks intriguing questions that are likely to catch someone's eye, and apply to programs that are the best fit for you. Good luck!

I have to agree with @Glasperlenspieler, I don't think admissions committees for PhD programs care a jot about whether you've published something or not, and whether you've presented at conferences. I don't know if sub-par publications could hurt your career in the long term or not; perhaps that's so. In any case, I think there are more useful things on which to focus time and energy.
The most important things with respect to PhD admissions are that you have an excellent writing sample and strong letters. Also important are GRE scores and grades. @philoguy, at this point your undergrad GPA is beyond your control anyway, as is the prestige-level of your MA institution. As for your GREs, my sense is it's probably not worth putting in lots of study hours to possibly raise them a couple of points from where they are now. They're already decently strong. I think if I were you, I would focus on getting strong letters, working on your sample, and getting good grades in your remaining coursework.

University of Chicago is actually ranked 21, and has never been higher than rank 20.
Also, I'd partially agree and partially disagree about the PGR. Yes, there are biases and methodological flaws to the PGR. It privileges the views of philosophers who work at R1's and is biased against non-western and most continental philosophy (and if you're interests lie in those areas, it is less useful). And yes, there are schools that are lower ranked (or unranked) that have relatively good TT placement rates, albeit mostly into teaching positions. And yes, most universities with a PhD program in philosophy will have a high quality department with actively publishing scholars.
But the PGR isn't (completely) random and arbitrary. It's a fairly large survey of members of the Profession and their views of each program, it's not just Leiter's subjective opinion (in fact, Leiter isn't even going to be running the next iteration of the PGR). The vast majority of TT research jobs in philosophy go to graduates of the top 10-to-15 programs, and there still is some correlation between rank and overall placement rates, though there are exceptions to that in both directions. And, in my own research into schools, the top programs do tend to be stronger in a wider array of subfields while lower ranked programs are often only strong in one or two areas.

I wouldn't dismiss concerns about departmental rigor as mere undergrad complaining. 
When it comes to grad school acceptance, unless the person whose advice you are soliciting has the power to accept or deny your application to a program, what they can give you is just an opinion, and some opinions are certainly more informed than others. It's fair to assume that a professor at a top PhD-granting program knows the profile of a typical admitted student and can give you an accurate assessment, even if you're not applying to their program specifically; the further you get from "top PhD-granting program", the less that assumption holds. Professors at top SLACs may have excellent standing in the discipline and may regularly send their undergrads to these coveted programs, but they don't have recent first-hand experience of admitting PhD students. They don't know what the competition is like. At the majority of US institutions, which may send an undergrad to a top PhD once every decade, if at all, professors have even less experience. You can't expect them to cogently reason from a sample of one. This is not to say that OP shouldn't apply to the T20 (they should if they want an academic job). That's to say that it is possible that OP's professors *don't* know how competitive they are.
As for the thesis, that is another valid concern. Few schools have enough strong faculty to supervise the great variety of dissertation topics that students come up with. That is, a professor can monitor that the research is done properly, the argument is cogent, and similar technical things, but if they're not a subject matter expert, they're not going to know whether you raised questions that are compelling in the context of the literature, not least because they can't evaluate if you surveyed the literature properly.
The only thing I wouldn't worry about is discussion-heavy classes and OP's (implied) disdain for those of their classmates that they perceive as not having done enough work. Lower and intermediate level classes may have a heavy lecture component, but upper-level stuff (seminars) is almost always done in a discussion format, at all schools I am familiar with, because its major goal is to teach you to do your own research and construct your own arguments (the difference, I assume, being that, at stronger programs, the goal is to assess your ability to do research and construct arguments, as you will have been doing that in your lower-level classes already), and because it's assumed that you're mature enough to have more control over your learning. This is the crucial part. The reality is, you can scrape by in any major, at any school. If you're content doing the minimum to stay afloat, you shouldn't be going to grad school. If you feel that you haven't been challenged, find ways to challenge yourself. 
Try to get someone who is an expert in your specific area to take a look at your diss (it's a longshot, sure...). They'll be able to tell you if it's good work content-wise.

@AP, my comment was specifically about the poster's comment about avoiding departmental drama and keeping their head down to do their work and only their work. That doesn't prepare one well for dealing with the drama that all workplaces have. Some of that department drama can have a direct impact on graduate students so it behooves students to at least pay some attention. (For example, my department ended up having a multi-year external search for a department chair. As a result, other faculty had to take on that work, leaving fewer advisors for PhD students and slowing down their grant/publication activity, which also affects PhD students. Consequently, a group of us paid close attention to the search and would explain to the faculty how and why we were being affected by it. That doesn't mean that we got dragged into being on the search committee but, it was something worth being aware of as a member of the department.)
I also think some people have a different idea of what it means to treat graduate school as a job than I do. For me, that means yes, you have friends outside of school but it also means that you have to build a network in school (in your department and around the university). It means working with people in your department. It means not being so selfish that you only focus on your own work, never pausing to help out others. None of those things are useful in the long-term as a grad student (and same for any workplace because no one likes the self-centered colleague who can never help anyone out with anything).
This last part might be because I come from an interdisciplinary field but, here goes anyway. If you don't have a broader understanding of your field and how to make your work interesting to people outside of your specialty area, then you're setting yourself up for a rough time on the job market (whether that's academic or not). One of the easiest ways to start learning how to do this is by having informal discussions with other students about what you're working on. If you're only there to go to class and do your own work (which is what the person I was responding to said), then you may not be allowing this to happen or you might view such conversations as a waste of time. My advice was a caution against that.

Adding to Bill's excellent response:
You need to specialize in the field you are most passionate about.  It's not about improving your odds at a job five years from now.  It's about doing your best work in a field where you would then be spending 30+ years of a career.  I really like Chaucer.  I'm incredibly fond of Victorian novels.  I dig comics and graphic novels.  But I can't imagine spending 30 years working on any of those topics.  But Renaissance drama?  I LIVE for that.  When I teach it, I come alive and I never tire of seeing it, thinking about it, and writing about it.  Whichever field gives you that feeling, THAT'S the field you should specialize in, because the work you do in that field will stand out on the job market, whether you are up against 20 competitors or 200.

Hello and welcome!

This isn't a bad question -- not at all -- but it's also a nearly impossible one to answer definitively for a variety of reasons. I can imagine writing a 1000+ word response (because I have a lot of thoughts on this topic), but I'll try to keep it brief.

First of all, you simply have to separate "odds of admission" and "employment further down the road" into two distinct categories. The academic landscape is constantly shifting, as is the job market. For the past few years, there has been a marked academic trend among applicants and in departments toward rhet-comp -- it currently seems to be the fastest growing, and most job-friendly field. But that's at the moment. Remember that a Ph.D. is going to take roughly five years minimum to complete, which means that an applicant right now is trying to forecast what the job market is going to look like in six or seven years. I personally think that's somewhere between a vain improbability and an outright impossibility. My gut feeling is that the job market for rhet-comp is going to be oversaturated within the next five years, simply because the advice-du-jour for the last few has been that it is the most employable field...which has prompted legions of new rhet-comp applicants (and acceptances). But how big can rhet-comp actually get in an otherwise shrinking discipline? I use rhet-comp as an example, just because it is the most distinct of the sub-disciplines within English.

Secondly, remember that (as I just mentioned) a Ph.D. program usually takes at least five years to complete. That's the same amount of time as your junior and senior high school years. It's long. While there is certainly some wiggle room in terms of era / field / genre once you get into a program, most of those years will be spent studying something fairly specific within a specific era or field...and because you have specialized, that's how you will be labeled when you go on the job market (i.e. 20th century Americanist, British Romanticist, Medievalist etc.). Moreover, you'll likely be tethered to that era / field / genre for the first several years that you are gainfully employed as a professor (in the slightly improbable event that that even happens). This leads to the all-important question of whether trying to choose a currently uncrowded field that will also be a future uncrowded field makes any sense from a personal interest standpoint. Again, things aren't quite as rigid as I'm making them out to be...but the core idea is correct.

Third, there are many reasons for why certain fields of study are "crowded" and "uncrowded." Take Restoration Drama, for instance. It's not at all a crowded field. If you happen to enjoy Etherege, Dryden, Congreve and others, you probably wouldn't have a lot of company in the application pool...but by that same token, there simply aren't many Restoration Drama scholars period, which means that you'd invariably need to narrow your list of programs considerably when you're applying, and if you're taking a long-term employability approach, you have to consider why there are so few working scholars in that field / era...and whether you have a decent shot at nabbing one of those few jobs when those scholars retire.

There are many more aspects I could detail (in my head, I have at least five other points...), but what it boils down to is that you should try to work on what interests you the most, with a slight bit of attention to what is available both now and in the future. I'm a Shakespearean myself (for the most part), and while there might be some "overcrowding" in terms of applicants interested in Shakespeare and his contemporaries, there are very few programs that don't have at least one or two Shakespearean scholars on faculty...and usually many more. A few eras / fields such as early modern drama (i.e. Shakespeare and co.) and 20th century British and American literature aren't going to go away anytime soon, nor are they likely to shrink any faster than the discipline in general. But that invariably means that they will be eras / fields with larger draws than others on the applicant end.

I hope this is at least somewhat helpful. It's a complicated industry, in a lot of ways, which means that there are very few easy answers to broad questions like this one...even if those questions certainly deserve to be asked!

I really resent the implication by a lot of posters in this thread that "younger" grad students are some how less serious about their coursework and research, obsessed with "bar hopping" or clueless as to how the real world works. My department has a cohort of 10-15 each year, and I would say there is usually 1 recent grad, 2 thirty-somethings, while the rest are between 25-30. 25-27 is also really not that young, and it's a bit patronizing to act like people this age have little life experience and are obsessed with drinking. Lots of us in this age cohort are putting our lives on hold to get our PhDs, which is huge sacrifice and makes us highly motivated to get in, and out and move on with our lives. Just because I'm 27 and like to hang out with my cohort at a bar on Friday nights, doesn't mean I don't work my a** off seven days a week. 
That being said, in my department the social aspect is hugely important, and (with a few exceptions) people in coursework years who don't socialize within the department seem to really struggle. It's important to have people that you can vent to about professors and coursework, share bibliography, get advice on fellowships and generals, introductions to scholars, advice on ins and outs of certain archives, etc...... I guess my point is, if you don't cultivate some type of a support system *within* the department, the next 6+ years are going to be an uphill battle.

Yeah, but Wissenschaft means something different by "science" than English typically does.

You mention that you're employed at an Ivy League institution. Perhaps you could consider taking a philosophy course or two there, perhaps a graduate course if you're able to do so. This would give you more recent grades on a transcript to help offset the low GPA from your BA (especially helpful if it's from a great institution), would help you get stronger letters, and could also give you a starting point for a new sample. If it's been 10 years, it would also give you a chance to see what it feels like to be doing academic philosophy again, and would probably also help you to feel less rusty in preparation for a graduate program.

Where did I say anything about "going out to bars"? Oh, that's right. I didn't. My concern is more that someone who is singlemindedly focused on coursework and research misses out on some of the key learning that's necessary to succeed in academia. As much as I loathe drama and politics, academia is full of them and being able to navigate these successfully is crucial when you're junior faculty. Even outside of academia, every workplace has its drama and it pays to pay attention, even if only so you can avoid getting caught up in it. You don't have to take my advice but, maybe someone else on this thread will find it of value.
@SarahBethSortino, I did plenty of socializing (both with my cohort and with others) in grad school that didn't involve going to the bars. We would go out for coffee, have work sessions in local coffee shops, work out together at the gym, watched sports together (live or on tv) etc. A lot of what I did with people was driven by our shared interests. I know that others would go biking, hiking, or rock climbing together, for example.
Looking back at my PhD, I had two good friends in my cohort (one MA/PhD student and one PhD student) plus two good friends (one each from the two cohorts ahead of mine*). As others have said, those are the people who have reviewed my grant, fellowship, and job application materials (yes, even when we were applying for the same thing!), given me feedback on drafts of journal articles, etc. In my case, we all have similar-ish research interests, which makes some of those things easier. I've never actually published with any of them, though I also wouldn't rule it out as something that might happen in the future. Those in the cohorts ahead of me were useful for thinking about exams, committees, coursework strategies, navigating weird institutional policies, etc.
Here's what I've noticed about those who were from the city where I did my PhD and had a network outside of campus. They didn't make close friends with anyone but then would all of a sudden become very friendly when they needed something. This meant that they were a lot nicer to others when they wanted a copy of your successful fellowship application, for you to share a syllabus and set of assignments you developed, or wanted your feedback on their fellowship/grant materials. I... dislike when people do that. It's one thing to share with your friends and another to share with someone who is basically a stranger that you've seen in the hall sometimes. So, regardless of whether you make lifelong friendships, I'd encourage everyone to cultivate collegial relationships with others in the program so you gain these informal benefits.
*BTW, when I say "cohort", I'm referring to when we started our degrees. For any number of reasons, several of us finished around the same time, despite not starting in the same year.

There's been lots of great advice in this thread already (especially from Duns Eith), and I agree with most of it. I'll just chip in with a few remarks.
 
It's probably not literally true, but it's also not as hyperbolic as you might wish. There are around 200-250 or so full-time entry-level jobs in philosophy advertised each year in the Anglophone world. That's TT jobs, postdocs, VAPs,and full-time adjuncting. The top ten programs don't graduate that many students each year, and I doubt they come very close to that number even when you account for the backlog. But only about 80 or so of these jobs are TT, meaning that there are only 80 or so real jobs up for grabs each year. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were at least half that many T10 grads in the market pool. For reference, I applied to 75 jobs this year and around 100 last year, and the average number of applicants seems to be about 650. One job had 1200+ applicants, and some have reported numbers as low as 180. Doubtless some have far, far fewer applicants. But for the most part, everyone is competing against hundreds of other perfectly qualified candidates.
 
It didn't matter very much to me when I started out. Now that I've finished up and hit the market (and that I've invested considerably more time and effort in it), and now that I understand the kinds of doors that prestige can open up for people, it matters a lot more to me (or, rather, it would). It's worth observing, however, that even students at the most prestigious programs struggle on the job market. There are no winners here--at least, not until they get an actual offer. It's also worth observing that program prestige and PGR rank aren't quite the same thing.
Finally, my own experiences and my observations of my colleagues on the market lead me to think that although prestige helps, it's not the be-all or end-all of one's job market run. Your advisors and their standing in the profession matter a lot. Your publication history matters a lot (though not as much as we might wish it did). And your professional network matters a lot (e.g. being known in your subfield can open doors for postdocs, invitations to publish in edited volumes, etc.). 
 
Yeah... remember that your professors are lottery winners. The job market was better when they were on it, but not so much better that it wasn't still largely a lottery. In this profession, everybody who gets a job--no matter where it is--is a lottery winner. The best and brightest are lucky to get any TT job at all, let alone a job a research institution or SLAC.
With apologies for being pedantic, but isn't a tight labour market one in which job seekers face embarrassment of riches (there's a high price for the product or service)? So the academic job market would be actually be extremely loose.
Honestly, the "continental schools hire continentalists from continental schools" thing is pretty much a myth (and a self-serving one to boot). They might be more likely to hire someone from one of the more prestigious (but nonetheless unranked) continental programs than ranked schools are, but that's still not saying much. Just count up faculty lists at a few of these schools, and you'll see that the bulk of them still come from ranked programs. Besides which, nobody going on the job market in philosophy should have any expectation of ending up at a school with a graduate program. There are very few of those posts and the competition for them is incredibly fierce, even at unranked schools. 
 
Just remember that the pay is generally pretty bad (like, 40-50k starting at most places, without much room for improvement [although it can be double or sometimes triple that at research institutions]), the work is hard, long, and unforgiving (60+ hours a week of your brain in high gear), and even if you win the job lottery you don't get any choice at all in where you live. Not the city or the state, and sometimes not even the country.

Popping in from elsewhere in the humanities, where the job market is similar (or worse?).
By this logic, it's equally irrational to pursue a career in the NBA, MLB, NFL, etc. You're odds are probably even worse if you want to be a fighter pilot. And major positions of elected office in competitive districts? Forget it! By the way, have you looked at the success rate for start-ups lately? Then there's acting, the music industry, or creative writing. Are all of these (and many other) career pursuits irrational? I don't know, maybe. That doesn't mean they're not worth pursuing though. Obviously, people should go in with their eyes open, lots of information, and realistic expectations, plus a plan B and maybe a plan C and D too. But I think it's not unreasonable that for the right sort of people, the calculus works out such that pursuing academia is a real option. (Whether that's the case for everyone in graduate school is another question.)
For what it's worth I really like the baseball-academia analogy. Most TT jobs are the equivalent of the numerous no name players in big leagues. The handful of R1 or equivalent positions are the Derek Jeters and Randy Johnsons of academia (I know my baseball references are outdated; I haven't really followed the sport for a while). Most baseball players, however, wash out after careers in minors or college ball of varying degrees of success. These are the adjuncts of the world. The disanalogy here is that I suspect most baseball players are better at determining when to cut their losses.

Doesn't this sort of depend on the purpose of the foreign language requirement? If it's just to prove that you have the ability to communicate with/learn another language, then certainly it should count. However, I think most departments in the humanities view the language requirement as a research tool. Xhosa is unquestionably a different language, but it's probably not going to be very helpful if I want to study ancient Athenian tragedy. So, I suspect that most departments that disallow it do so not because they don't think ASL is a language, but rather because they don't see it as a viable research tool.
(note: I'm not trying to take a stand on the issue here, but this does seem to be what's at stake)

Oops, totally missed that. Sorry! I certainly didn't mean to imply that ASL would never be a viable research tool, only that which languages count as a viable research tools depends heavily on what field you're in. I would hope that any department with strengths in disability studies allows ASL and if not I suspect your diagnosis is correct.

Doesn't this sort of depend on the purpose of the foreign language requirement? If it's just to prove that you have the ability to communicate with/learn another language, then certainly it should count. However, I think most departments in the humanities view the language requirement as a research tool. Xhosa is unquestionably a different language, but it's probably not going to be very helpful if I want to study ancient Athenian tragedy. So, I suspect that most departments that disallow it do so not because they don't think ASL is a language, but rather because they don't see it as a viable research tool.
(note: I'm not trying to take a stand on the issue here, but this does seem to be what's at stake)

Sure, but OP says their research area is disability studies, for which ASL is absolutely useful. From the experiences I've heard from folks working on deaf cultures or disability studies who struggled to get ASL accepted for a language requirement, it seems that part of the reason why departments don't see ASL as a viable research tool is precisely because they don't really think of it as a language.