Time to start getting your act together, if that's your plan!
Regarding M.A. programs, I recommend the guest post by Robert Schwartz of University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Regarding applying to Ph.D. programs, I stand by the advice I gave in 2007, with a few caveats:
- The academic job market is horrible now, after having been unusually good from about 1999-2007. Hopefully it will recover in a few years, though to what extent philosophy departments will participate in that recovery is an open question. Bear these trends in mind when looking at schools' placement records.
- The non-academic job market is also horrible now. When the non-academic job market is horrible, graduate school admissions is generally more competitive.
- In my posts, I may have somewhat underestimated the importance of the GRE. However, I want to continue to emphasize that different schools, and different admissions committees within the same school over time, take the GRE seriously to different degrees, and thus a low GRE score should by no means doom your hopes. If you have a GRE score that is not in keeping with your graduate school ambitions, I recommend applying to more than the usual number of schools, so that your application will land among at least a few committees that don't give much weight to the GRE.