I think there's also too much stock being put into the 'adcom process' as if each department has a secret recipe/ algorithm for sorting through candidates and producing exactly the cohort that represents their way of doing philosophy or something. More typically, after the initial sorting through of the gpa, gre, prestige of LORs, and other factors, you are left with around 20/30 extremely strong candidates and then it is a case of which writing samples/ philosophical projects appealed to individual members of the committee or, indeed, rubbed them the wrong way. Needless to say, it starts getting very subjective at that point. So it is both a straightforward process in the first step and a bit of a lottery in the second step.
On my second round as well (and have done pretty well, accepted to Toronto and Oxford, waitlisted at UCLA, CUNY and NYU).