I think the "highly ranked school" is what matters in that case, not that the degree is in philosophy in particular. If you graduate with a 3.9 from Harvard, your specific degree doesn't matter for many lucrative fields, and you'll have access to connections for the interviews.

Yep, of course. And there's definitely a lower bar of a school pedigree than Harvard to get into a great company or great postgrad or whatever. I guess the general point is, a philosphy degree is really not a big handicap IF you're very bright and/or hard working and on a good trajectory. Unless you want to go into HFT or intern at NASA.