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@Duns Eithhas already given you good advice. To add to the general air of negativity here: if there's something else that you'd like to do, and that you think you'd be good at, it would be preferable to do that if you can. There aren't really many good academic jobs at all in philosophy, more are disappearing every day, our society doesn't much value humanities education, and most public universities in America (the ones where you'd formerly have had a chance of getting a job) are struggling/going to struggle more (especially humanities departments at these institutions), thanks to the economic fallout from COVID and the enrollment cliff. If you're not familiar with the enrollment cliff, this is it. It's bleak. If you're dead set on trying philosophy, plan on doing something else other than teaching after (i.e., career change). This won't be an easy path either.
If you're dead set on doing philosophy, an MA can be a good way to test the waters. My advice: don't do an unfunded MA. It's not a degree that's going to pay off, so it's not worth paying a bunch of money for it. If you can't get into a funded MA in philosophy, then you should probably just go do something else (being very blunt here). I'd also strongly recommend that you not do an online degree. I did my MA, and then COVID hit during the first year of my PhD, so I've gotten the normal in-person grad school experience, as well as the online substitute. Again, to be blunt--doing grad school online sucks. Part of what adds value to a grad program are your interactions with people in your department. You chat with other grad students before seminar, you run into faculty in the hall, etc. You feel like you're part of something. None of that happens if you're doing your education online. I know Edinburgh has a nice reputation, but I still wouldn't do it. Also, I'd imagine that it'd be harder to form the kinds of connections you need to get letters from faculty for PhD applications if you're only interacting online.

Hi, @JesusFdz
What are your long-term goals?
I saw elsewhere that you were thinking of going into philosophy in order to teach.
I hate to be the Donny downer, but you realize that this is not the kind of thing you just go into. Teaching jobs that pay more than rent, clothing, and food are hard to come by. If you go into a PhD program, you need to accept the possibility that you never get more than an adjunct position. Adjunct pay right now is somewhere between $1,600 and $3,000 per class (from where I have seen in large metro areas/big state universities, not cities like NYC, LA or Chicago). That means if you teach two classes at one "well-paying" school at $2500 each and two classes at another "average" school for $2000 each, you're looking at a very full load (probably 120 students), and only making $9,000 a semester, or $18,000 per year (not including summers).
Famous article, now 15 years old, and the prospects even worse: "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go" https://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/44846 Anyone who aspires to a PhD needs to have the absolute determination that you will consider it worthwhile to complete, even if you don't get the tenure track job. Setting aside 6-10 years of your life making low income must be worth it to you for other reasons than becoming a professor.
As for MA programs, don't pay for a program. I think you said you can do tuition assistance via GI bill. I dunno how that works, especially for international stuff.
As for Edinburgh, I have had friends go to Edinburgh in different departments. All of them were happy there in person. I have no idea what you'd expect in doing remote work.

First off, I am sorry that you have needed to pay even a cent for an MA in humanities. I would strongly advise against anyone who considers such a route of entering any grad school for humanities, without funding. It makes so little financial sense.
Second, your GPA is definitely wrecked. Most people I know working on an MA in philosophy had about a 3.7 or higher before moving to PhD. Maybe they were not normal. Maybe the programs are not typical (maybe there's grad inflation).
Third, if I am honest, whatever you want to do in philosophy almost certainly can be done without credentials and without all the suffering. There are no jobs, practically speaking, for teaching gigs that pay more than $30k a year. If you are able to do what you want without going the PhD route or get an MA in philosophy, then do that. Be creative. If you just want to be smarter and blog, then move to a city with a good library (or library system) and let philosophy be a hobby more than a jobby. If you want social connections, there are plenty of groups online interested in discussion and many have podcasters or Zoom reading groups. If you want to educate and provide resources to inform students interested in the subject, create a YouTube channel or Twitch and give it a go. The university system is broken.

This is super generous, but note the caveat before blasting Alexander with emails: 'particularly those who don't get in anywhere'.

For anyone rejected by Rutgers: 
 

There is something with this. But also, note that there may be cases where ones intended supervisor leaves, or one is no longer passionate about what she used to.
So, there are some good things about going to a top department:
1) There are more top-notch philosophers at top departments (I wonder whether you'll reject the notion of top department, though)
2) There are more top-notch philosophers in different areas at one top department. This may itself make one change ones interests, and it also allows that one can actually change the direction without loss at many levels.

Yeah, supporting something and being responsible for its existence/operation are two very different things

I think a lot of you are focusing way too much on PGR rankings without really understanding what they are and how they should be used. These rankings are the result of a man (Brian Leiter) who's sole goal in life is to make academic philosophy into as toxic of a place as possible. PGR rankings serve to give 20 or so. academics at top ranking departments the chance to express their general opinion about other departments in the field. The rankings themselves don't really make much sense. How do you put a relevant quantitative number on something like a 7-year graduate program? 
You should never, ever, base your choice on PGR rankings. Use them as a general guide for what programs are considered quality by other academics, but nothing more.
I have been accepted by a T50 school and waitlisted by a T10, a T20, and a T30 school. I went to a small liberal arts college that is fairly unknown, and I am finishing up a philosophy MA at an unranked school that does not have a strong reputation. It isn't impossible to get into PGR places without a pedigree.
I am actually planning on attending the T50 school over the others because they have a really top scholar who works in my field. You should always attend places based on who you want to work with, not some BS ranking by dipshit Brian Leiter.
I think we on this forum have put too much stock in a system that professors themselves don't think should be there. I wish Leiter would heed the calls to take that stupid ranking down.

Brian Leiter hasn't ran the PGR in years

Please stop telling people that they should only attend a PGR T10 school. It is very clear that some people think that anything less then that will result in homelessness or something. Look at individual departments, with people that you like, and check the placements of students who worked with the people that you want to work with. 
Another word of advice, just do an MA out of Undergrad. Too many people don't know what academic philosophy is and how it works in a real department. An MA gives you a really good primer for the real thing at a PhD. I know too many smart people who did well in UG, got into a PhD in philosophy, and were shocked that it was competitive and that they had *gasp* submit papers for publication that were most likely going to be rejected. Grad school sucks. Even once you get in it is constant rejection, second guessing, and anxiety. The people who have it worse (this is anecdotal of course) are those straight out of UG and no MA.

TGC is like a drug for me. It is detrimental to my mental health but I can't help but check it, just to get my soul crushed whenever there's an acceptance/waitlist report and I didn't get anything from them. It sucks to know that my philosophical abilities are not adequate enough for me to be an academic philosopher. I thought I was good enough. 
Bracing for a shut out. I think about ending it all on a daily basis. (Not my life, but just my philosophical career as a whole) 

American. No sources of funding offered and none expected. I am an older student and can, luckily, swing the tuition. 

I can claim an Oxford DPhil acceptance that I plan to accept. If there are any others out there would love to connect. 

I do want to point out that while it suggests your application may have been weaker than some others, it's not fair to yourself to say that it was weak full stop. I suspect that the ratio of qualified PhD applicants to accepted PhD applicants is currently at an all-time high, and getting rejected when you're in many cases competing against literally hundreds of other applicants for a number of seats in the low single digits does not mean that you're unqualified, incompetent, or not worthy of attending a PhD program. As a current PhD student who only barely made it into a good program in what I suspect was a much less competitive year, I have no doubt that I would have been completely shut out if I had been applying this year (and yes, I was similarly much more confident about my chances than I should have been). There's often an element of luck in these things when acceptance rates are so low, and I'm pretty sure that there were many applicants just as capable as me (if not more capable than me) who were shut out that year.
So don't be too hard on yourself, regardless of the final outcome. Waiting for applications to come back is awful, rejections are soul-crushing, and it's normal to feel miserable about the whole thing. And moreover, while it's important to not give up hope while you're waiting to hear back from the remaining programs, it's also important to remember that the vicissitudes of academic philosophy should not be taken as indicative of your worth as a student or as a human being.

I do want to point out that while it suggests your application may have been weaker than some others, it's not fair to yourself to say that it was weak full stop. I suspect that the ratio of qualified PhD applicants to accepted PhD applicants is currently at an all-time high, and getting rejected when you're in many cases competing against literally hundreds of other applicants for a number of seats in the low single digits does not mean that you're unqualified, incompetent, or not worthy of attending a PhD program. As a current PhD student who only barely made it into a good program in what I suspect was a much less competitive year, I have no doubt that I would have been completely shut out if I had been applying this year (and yes, I was similarly much more confident about my chances than I should have been). There's often an element of luck in these things when acceptance rates are so low, and I'm pretty sure that there were many applicants just as capable as me (if not more capable than me) who were shut out that year.
So don't be too hard on yourself, regardless of the final outcome. Waiting for applications to come back is awful, rejections are soul-crushing, and it's normal to feel miserable about the whole thing. And moreover, while it's important to not give up hope while you're waiting to hear back from the remaining programs, it's also important to remember that the vicissitudes of academic philosophy should not be taken as indicative of your worth as a student or as a human being.

I do want to point out that while it suggests your application may have been weaker than some others, it's not fair to yourself to say that it was weak full stop. I suspect that the ratio of qualified PhD applicants to accepted PhD applicants is currently at an all-time high, and getting rejected when you're in many cases competing against literally hundreds of other applicants for a number of seats in the low single digits does not mean that you're unqualified, incompetent, or not worthy of attending a PhD program. As a current PhD student who only barely made it into a good program in what I suspect was a much less competitive year, I have no doubt that I would have been completely shut out if I had been applying this year (and yes, I was similarly much more confident about my chances than I should have been). There's often an element of luck in these things when acceptance rates are so low, and I'm pretty sure that there were many applicants just as capable as me (if not more capable than me) who were shut out that year.
So don't be too hard on yourself, regardless of the final outcome. Waiting for applications to come back is awful, rejections are soul-crushing, and it's normal to feel miserable about the whole thing. And moreover, while it's important to not give up hope while you're waiting to hear back from the remaining programs, it's also important to remember that the vicissitudes of academic philosophy should not be taken as indicative of your worth as a student or as a human being.

I do want to point out that while it suggests your application may have been weaker than some others, it's not fair to yourself to say that it was weak full stop. I suspect that the ratio of qualified PhD applicants to accepted PhD applicants is currently at an all-time high, and getting rejected when you're in many cases competing against literally hundreds of other applicants for a number of seats in the low single digits does not mean that you're unqualified, incompetent, or not worthy of attending a PhD program. As a current PhD student who only barely made it into a good program in what I suspect was a much less competitive year, I have no doubt that I would have been completely shut out if I had been applying this year (and yes, I was similarly much more confident about my chances than I should have been). There's often an element of luck in these things when acceptance rates are so low, and I'm pretty sure that there were many applicants just as capable as me (if not more capable than me) who were shut out that year.
So don't be too hard on yourself, regardless of the final outcome. Waiting for applications to come back is awful, rejections are soul-crushing, and it's normal to feel miserable about the whole thing. And moreover, while it's important to not give up hope while you're waiting to hear back from the remaining programs, it's also important to remember that the vicissitudes of academic philosophy should not be taken as indicative of your worth as a student or as a human being.

Take two Advil and post again in the morning.  

By "best" I mean real interest and knowledge in the content of ontological/philosophical systems, ie what they says about reality : how reality as a all is structured and how it works or constructs itself.   I have to put this strong because most if not all of academics presentations about ontology or metaphysics are in fact meta-metaphysics ie epistemology : they only talk about the conditions of possibilities of a possible speech about the all of reality that never comes. Very irritating and that makes their saying cumbersome. I don't want to interact with this kind of scholars especially if they are language oriented (analytical or any philosophical position that emphasize or essentialize language, I can't stand that)   I made-up a system, a mater/life/thought ontology, but in computer science. (if by extraordinary you tried hard by yourself to made-up one, I know you started from scratch, in complete vacuum because you discovered there exists nothing convincing and I also know you didn't succeed, sorry; so if I say the solution I found works fine and then it's the best, somewhat by default, only you can understand there is zero bullshiting or megalomania here. And for those who didn't tried please wipe the former sentence from your mind now )   I tried to transfer it to the philosophical world but I discovered that people, including well known academics specialized in metaphysics , are not interested at all in content. Exactly like in art, especially painting, their mind is only activated by dominance : they only want to hear the dominant words : "Hegel", "Heideger", "Derrida" etc. like "Picasso" in painting. Content is indifferent and simply doesn't exist without attributes of dominance.   That's why I concluded I have to paint this system with attributes of grandeur and institution via a Phd in a place and with a director who already has this attribute, ie has access to well known international publications and conferences.   I vaguely remember having heard of an academic, a woman if I'm correct, who do the mater/life/thought segmentation of reality but I couldn't find back the reference (was a radio talk a few years ago).   Thanks for any suggestion.  

Tell your friends and family that the average acceptance rate at top-10 programs is 3-4%, making philosophy the most competitive discipline in academia
Edit: the acceptance rates are likely to be even lower this year

Not particularly philosophy-related but posting this here anyway since I'm wrapping up my applications for graduate programs in philosophy within the next few weeks, but damn. This process really is such a crapshoot. It seems like everyone has a 4.0 GPA, stellar letters of recommendation from well-known professors in their fields, flawless writing samples, etc etc., and I feel like my application is decent but nothing exceptional. I have genuinely no idea what's going to happen come February-April. It's going to be terribly embarrassing if I get shut out this cycle and have to explain to friends and family that none of the 20+ PhD programs I applied to this fall decided to accept my application. Just needed to vent. Best of luck to everyone submitting applications this cycle!

Applying to grad school is uhhhhhhhhhh the worst. 

My guess is that, because (unfortunately, as has been noted recently) the same folks tend to get accepted to the top programs, even this year, those programs will have a relatively similar yield to usual. On the other hand, lower-ranked programs, which some applicants are in some years less keen on, might see more interest and thus higher yield.

I don't think the OP was suggesting otherwise, but just wanted to clarify since there are different kinds of numbers being thrown out in this thread. The acceptance rate (which you're unlikely to find out from departments other than UCSD) is how many people a given dept accepts, not percentage of students that enroll out of the applicant pool. My department typically accepts about three (sometimes up to four) times the number of students they enroll. This year we got about 300 applications (slightly more than usual), and are aiming to enroll 5 students (which is normal), so we will probably (if history is a good guide) end up admitting about 15-20 students, which is a 5-7ish % acceptance rate. (My department is ranked below 30 on the PGR, though I think we get an unusually high # of applications in general, especially now that I've seen UCSD's acceptance rate.) When I was in grad school at a PGR-top-five place, they typically accepted about two times the number of students they enrolled. (UCSD is definitely listing this, not percentage of students that enroll out of their applicant pool; but that means you can't compare it to places where you just know how many students enroll and how many applications there are.)
 
 

I've taken some time off of Gradcafe for the past two days to clear my mind and think about my situation rationally. I would like to first apologize to @PolPhil for making unsubstantiated, emotional, and irrational claims and charges against them. I am not sure why I was so antagonistic and belligerent a couple of days ago. I think it was just a mixture of my own inferiority complex and resent towards those who were accepted to the programs that I was rejected from, which I now understand is irrational and immature. I have nothing against those who were accepted to many top programs and I genuinely would like to congratulate them on their success this cycle. 
Further, I do want to agree with @PolPhil that rejections from these top schools do indicate that my application is weak, and there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. Maybe I can try again next cycle with an improved dossier and perhaps that would yield a better result. Further, so far I've only gotten rejections from 4 schools out of 16 I applied to so I shouldn't necessarily despair yet. If I do get rejected from all of them then so be it, but I guess I shouldn't necessarily be too depressed or anxious prematurely before all the decisions are released, although that is definitely easier said than done. Nonetheless I shall try my best.
Now for the vent: In the case that I get shut out this cycle, it is just somewhat disheartening to see that my philosophical aptitude is not as high as I thought it was. I've been receiving many compliments and encouragements from my professors in my institution and I've always thought that I had a good chance in the admissions but perhaps I was too arrogant and self-centered. Of course everyone applying to philosophy graduate schools would have been "the number one student" of their schools. Also, it just sucks that many people are getting some kind of positive responses such as acceptance or waitlist and I've been only getting rejections. I can't do anything about it but this just makes me sad and depressed. And yes, I know the cycle isn't over yet but my anxiety and depression regarding the results are killing me. 
Let's all keep our hopes up, even though I know very well that it is hard to do so (especially this cycle with the increased competitiveness). Again, my sincerest apologies to @PolPhil.