<p>This should probably boil down to Michigan and Reed.</p>
<p>Realize that at top philosophy departments, getting As is going to be very difficult. It has nothing to do with the quality of the students, but with the limits they have on giving As. I was in a class where i was one of only two students out of 40 to get an A. There are plenty of A-s/B+, but getting the pure A is difficult.</p>
<p>My advice is to go to Reed. Although Michigan undoubtedly has the better department, your writing looks like it could use a lot of work. Michigan likely wouldn’t be able to give you the attention to improve your writing that a small LAC like Reed could. Given that your writing sample will be the most important determinant of whether you get accepted into top programs our not, it should be of paramount importance.</p>
<p>You should also realize that philosophy is most U.S. departments is analytic in style. Analytic phil. isn’t for everyone. I’ve met some professors that love it, and some that hate it. Some of the major interests in analytic phil. are reference and identity, and historically there are a few big figures of analytic phil (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and maybe others like Quine thrown in, and contemporary stuff by Kripke) and the stuff that was going on in the 20th century (e.g. the death of logical positivism.)</p>
<p>Now, certainly these topics won’t dominate your studies, but they will likely be of major research interests to the faculty at the colleges within the U.S.</p>