turnings

If I recall correctly, the placement of Brandeis on the list was somewhat anomalous (I can't remember the reason - I think they only looked at a particular part of its program, on "American Civilization" or something like that?).

A study was released about a year ago looking at prestige hierarchies & hiring patterns in doctoral programs - this seems to be about the most "legitimate" measure available. The top five there are 1) Harvard 2) Yale 3) Berkeley 4)Princeton 5) Stanford. I suppose in my head I have a similar rough sense of prestige as mvlchicago, although I would definitely include both columbia and stanford in the list of so-called "bomb schools." Maybe hopkins too?

More accurate.

This is an extremely rare area of interest and has little (/next to no) institutional foothold within the American academy. U Chicago's Committee on Social Thought might be a place to look, or more philosophy-oriented intellectual historians like Peter Gordon at Harvard. Interdisciplinary programs, as you've noted, are very often more engaged with theoretical questions, and may generally be a better bet.

The very best programs are competing for a similar set of applicants. Obviously not the same as fit varies from place to place but, as you'll discover when you bump into a number of the same people at different admit weekends, there is a fair bit of overlap. I imagine this is why places like NYU have such notoriously insane admissions procedures - they're competing for the Harvard-level admits but don't have quite the pull of those five or six top departments. Mind I'm not saying it's great that the system works this way, and obviously the programs you're admitted to have, within reason, only a marginal relation to how talented you might be as a historian. The problem with prestige is that its luster fails to fade even when we admit to the much more complicated reality of the process.

Hi I'm from 1893 and I'd like to tell you the objective truth about our cutting edge advances in racial science. Onward empire!

Totally.

1) Quant scores mean next to nothing. 2) An MA will not harm your future prospects at PhD programs, and will very likely improve your application. 3) The Ivys (this is not a terribly useful metric for graduate program prestige, btw) do not have any particular preference for students coming directly from undergraduate programs, so far as I am aware. It sounds like you have a fair idea of what you'd like to study, and you've apparently identified some historians with whom you'd like to work. If you apply to both MA and doctoral programs, I would imagine you have a good shot at receiving admission somewhere. Even if you don't receive a direct PhD admit, a funded MA is quite a good deal and should position you very well for applications down the line. I'd go for it and apply now.

Your stats are fine. AFAIK most programs require all GRE scores, so you can't choose between them. Your key problem at the moment is focus. Early American, Medieval, African, and Early Church history are vastly different fields. If you want to be admitted to any PhD program in history, much less the programs you've listed, you will need to choose one of these and develop enough familiarity with its historiography to propose an original research project. An MA in history might help here, especially if you can find funding/can afford it yourself.

It sounds to me like you might want to consider archaeology programs. That said, I know that Valerie Hansen at Yale works on the history of the Silk Road.

The quantitative score is essentially irrelevant at most schools, even in the "top 10." Provided your score is not genuinely abysmal the only thing that will matter to admissions committees is the verbal section - this, obviously, should be as close to 170 as possible. (one note: I believe many state schools use gre scores to determine funding packages, so what I said above may not apply in all cases.)

Fair enough. I don't know that there's any real difference between 124 and 74 or 123 and 92 though. Given the conclusions of the study, one should think very, very carefully about attending a program that far down the chain.

It doesn't seem to vary much at all as far as I can tell. The only unusual placements (near the top) appear to be UWisconsin, coming in slightly higher than most would conventionally expect, and Brandeis, whose vastly higher position appears to result from the fact that the designers of the study used only the rank of Brandeis' American History PhD program, rather than the program as a whole (see footnote 3 on pg. 17 of the supplementary materials pdf).

There's also the tried and true R1 --> book contract & book --> adjunct

AFAIK, NYU and Princeton do not have teaching requirements.