Eigen

Then I'm doubly glad the department pays for up to 15 hours per semester whether in-state or out of state. They only accepted 5 PhD students and I have met two others (1 in-state, 2 of us from out-of-state), so either the other two declined or they are on fellowship for the first year.

This is more true for private than public schools, and depends on the difference between in and out-of state tuition. If the out-of-state tuition is twice in-state, the school is effectively choosing between two in-state graduate students or one out-of-state student.
Some state schools accordingly require you to become a resident to lower the tuition. In other words, they'll pay the difference during the year it takes you to establish residency, but after that either you pay the difference or you establish residency. See some of the Cali schools for this. 

But that's not what you said- you said you can't establish residency while in school. You can establish residency while in school, you just can't immediately become a resident for tuition purposes. If you do establish residency while in school, your tuition will go back to the in-state value after you've been in the state for a year. 
Most undergrads don't establish residency because they can't meet the requirements- and it's usually not worth it. It means they (usually) can't be on their parents insurance, can't go back home and work a job over breaks, etc.
Most graduate students do establish residency, but don't have to- they can opt to consider themselves students and go home to register a car, get at drivers license, etc.

Could you define your research interest a bit more precisely and modify significantly how you summarize the state of existing scholarship? 
A google search for "war on drugs criminal justice united states scholarly article .pdf" yields over 300k hits. A ProQuest dissertation search for "war on drugs criminal justice united states" maxes out the number of hits (40). A jstor search for (((war on drugs ) AND (criminal justice)) AND (united states)) limited to journals in African American Studies, Criminology and Criminal Studies, History, Law, Political Science, Public Health, and Public Policy and Administration yields 307k hits. The Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library has posted on line a 16 page summary of its holdings related to drug abuse policy. IME, this type of summary is a byproduct of public, journalistic, and scholarly interests and FOIA requests. With the number of results that one can find in a few minutes, the assertion that "there isn't a lot of study in this area currently" may raise some eyebrows unless you define that area more specifically.

@Steph Smith, please exercise greater care in how you describe your research, your findings, and your interests. Saying that your search faculty member websites have provided little indication that historians are working on the war on drugs is vastly different than saying "There isn't a lot of study in this area currently."
IRT "free sources" please keep using Google, available library catalogs, libraries near you (https://library.drake.edu/), and maybe online booksellers. Also, when you do research on a professor look for his or her CV and course syllabi. Those documents will generally provide more information than web sites.
If you manage to get into a good periodical library or access to Jstor, I recommend very strongly this article. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24911839?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
The article provides a framework for an event in the recent past becoming a topic of historical inquiry.

Waterloo:
A student is eligible to apply for direct admission to the PhD in Chemistry - Co-operative program if they have a first class Honours Bachelor of Science degree, or the equivalent, and is a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant. Course requirements are reduced by 1 course for students admitted directly to the PhD program from a Bachelor of Science (BSc). So not all bachelors, but definitely not a hard requirement of an MS. As to the immigrant status... The MS as an admission req mentions domestic students only as well, so I'm guessing it's confusingly written. 
For UBC, you're looking at the college wide page, not the chemistry program. UBCs chemistry program does direct admit. 
https://www.chem.ubc.ca/graduate-admissions

You and I were born in the same year, and I also have a child. Based on my own experience, I would tell you that you may be able to get by without friends, but you'll make life harder for yourself if you don't have allies among the other students. These are the people who will share their successful fellowship applications with you, pass along their lecture notes when you're sick, cover for you when you have a conflict, etc. Please do your best to be openminded and humble -- just because someone is a decade younger than you doesn't mean you two won't connect, or that he or she does not have a lot to teach you.
I wish you luck!

C'mon people. It's harder to put the trolls back under their bridge after they've been fed. 

I've never seen a requirement like this, but if they ask for specific recommendations and you don't have them, I'm not sure they'd even consider it- they might consider the application incomplete. 

I'll let people in MSW programs answer, but from a general perspective that's way too little time out of class. 
For accreditation, the baseline amount of out-of-class work is a minimum of 2 hours per hour spent in class, so 6 hours out of class for a 3-hour class. And that's supposed to be a minimum. 

I love the portability of my air, but I have a desktop at work that balances it out. 
I think power wise you'll be fine with a newer model 13" air, and they have the best battery life of the lineup.
I would personally invest in a good monitor for work/home so you have a bigger screen to work on when you need it. I use dual 24" monitors at work and love the room for writing and analysis- I can tile 4 full size documents easily. 

The only things like this I would add to my CV are those that I consider particularly applicable. For me, this pretty much boils down to pedagogy courses (since I'm in the SLAC market). 
So when I take a short course or MOOC on, say, integrating research into the undergraduate curriculum, it goes onto my CV under professional development, and shows that I'm making an effort to grow and keep current in pedagogical strategies. It's the same heading I put in-person workshops and short courses under.

I think you're over-generalizing what "most" people do in the sciences.
In my current Chemistry department, it's about a 50:50 split, with the edge slightly to Macs. In my graduate chemistry department, it was slightly more Macs than PCs. In the bio programs I collaborate with, Macs are more common than PCs. 
In my current school's Science division as a whole, there are definitely more Macs than PCs. 
There are definitely Mac/PC issues in Office, but that's why people upthread are recommending that the OP wait and see what their research group uses. For instance, when I started grad school I had a PC, and had to switch to Mac because that was the prevalent OS. 
As to some of your more direct comparisons, keep this in mind: You can run Windows on a Mac, but (for the most part) you can't run OSX on a PC. Technically, that makes getting a Mac the "safer" bet if you don't know what colleagues will be using, since you can always take your Mac, install Windows, and remove any potential compatibility issues.

If it's compatible, Macbooks are worth the premium (not Pro, I agree you don't need that).  They require hardly any maintenance and a few years down the road are still running 90% as fast as when new.  I've never met a PC I can say the same about -- and that's before even taking into account all the countless hours you will spend running virus/malware scans.  
I don't like Apple snobbery but their machines are simply better and it's not particularly close.

Please keep in mind that Arizona heat is different than Carolina heat because of the humidity. If you don't give yourself enough prep and travel time, you could end up arriving as wet as you were when you get out the shower. (This happened to me a couple of times in Texas.)
Moisture wicking undies (I like Ex officio these days), performance jeans with moister wicking threads. and a synthetic top over a synthetic under shirt can help mitigate the effects of the heat and the humidity.
Keep your cool as you adjust to the culture. You may meet people whose views align with yours on issues A through X but collide on Y and Z. If Y or Z = 2A issues, the armed services, or race relations do what you can to roll with it.
If Y or Z is some thing about the Duke Blue Devils playing better basketball than the Tar Heels, put down your drink, take off your watch, roll up your sleeves, break a beer bottle, brandish it like a dirk, and say "Excuse me?"

That's not really how typical scores work. Rarely are they taken as an important criteria in a case like yours (great letters, good research experience) unless they're below a hard cutoff set by the school.

I'll just note that pedagogical literature shows that the act of physically taking notes is beneficial in the learning process. It's why I strongly discourage my students from taking notes on a computer or printed slides. 
The process of taking notes during a lecture, then going back and filling in portions that is incomplete is also a critical part of learning and helping cement connections. 
When I'm taking notes on anything, it's always pen and paper. Then later I can transcribe them to a digital format if need be (scan, re-type, etc.). But the first brush is always by hand.

Just out of curiosity, are you guys saying what you think a decent/average GPA is, or a *good* GPA?
 
I was answering based on an above average definition of good, but with the 3.5 range answers, I'm thinking maybe I'm going in a slightly different direction. 

What I've noticed that tends to give a bad impression in past first year students in our program. Some of these, hopefully most of these, should be really obvious. 
 
Don't focus too much on classes, and not enough on everything else. Courses should be a minor part of what defines you as a graduate student/researcher. When your life revolves around courses, and you spend hours not in the lab because you're "studying" for courses we all know don't need that much study time, it makes you seem like you don't really get what grad school is about. 
 
While it's obvious, act like an adult. Be professional in your interactions with people, own mistakes you've made and move on without too many excuses. Don't be the guy that can't get over the fact that he now knows people who are married/have kids/are in their 30s. 
 
That said, treat your work like a job. You're getting paid to take school seriously and do research. If you show up at 10, go to a class, hit the gym for 2 hours and leave at 3, you likely won't make good impressions. That said, you don't need to make school and your work the entirety of your life. 
 
Along with that, lean how to be at least a little bit social. You don't want to be the new department party animal (well, you might, but that's on you), but you also don't want to be that first year who never does anything social with the department, and leaves all the department functions early/doesn't come. 
 
Don't be too cocky. Sure, you'll hear some of the 4/th/5th/6th year students talk critically about a seminar speaker in their area, or a faculty member deconstruct a colleagues research. That doesn't mean you should always do the same. Don't be the first year who talks about how some of the faculty are deadweight/have bad research/aren't as smart as they are. 

Depends on the school. My school had a max embargo time of 2 years, and even that required some special hoops. The default embargo time if you needed it was 1 year. 
This is something I think people don't rank importantly enough. You can see in this story that people told her over and over that she shouldn't work with him, that he was taking advantage of her- to the point where she stopped talking to friends about him at all. It doesn't seem like this was someone with a sterling reputation and this a one-off case.

There's the GRE subforum where some members post essays and occasionally get help. Frankly, though, I'm surprised that Magoosh is sending people here for essay critiques since this is not the purpose of this board. I think regular posters are on the whole much more inclined to help other regular posters who might occasionally post an essay but are otherwise contributing board-members than random newcomers who are only here to get help with a GRE essay but aren't going to pay it forward in any way. That said, you can try and post your essay and see if anyone replies. 

I guess my question is one of how serious you and the SO are. Do you see a real future for the two of you together, one where you can pursue your passions/interests plus be together? How will you feel about having delayed graduate school if you and your SO were to break up 3-6 months from now? Thinking about things in this way might help you have a good perspective on your relationship, which can in turn help with making a decision. Personally, I picked grad school when in a somewhat similar situation and I don't regret it. Why? Because the SO that wasn't that supportive of me moving across the country for grad school was being selfish and wasn't interested in what was best for me long-term, which means things would've ended disastrously at some point.

Yeah, I don't have policies against computers. I just encourage students to try taking them by hand, and show the relevant studies. That said, most recent literature on cognitive science of learning also goes agains the idea of multiple "learning styles" a lot more, and learning from handwriting seems to be relatively universal- ie, it benefits everyone.
The other reason why I don't do blanket no computer policies is an accessibility concern. If I ban them and then exempt a student who needs to use one for accessibility reasons, I'm obviously singling that person out to the class.
it was something I got from "The Accessible Sylabus Project" that stuck with me. 

I'll just note that pedagogical literature shows that the act of physically taking notes is beneficial in the learning process. It's why I strongly discourage my students from taking notes on a computer or printed slides. 
The process of taking notes during a lecture, then going back and filling in portions that is incomplete is also a critical part of learning and helping cement connections. 
When I'm taking notes on anything, it's always pen and paper. Then later I can transcribe them to a digital format if need be (scan, re-type, etc.). But the first brush is always by hand.

Schools can be strange. Where I did my PhD, there were multiple non-overlapping and very similar fields. 
You could do Molecular and Cellular Biology at the medical school, you could do Cellular and Molecular Biology in the biology department, you could do Biochemistry at the Medical School, or Biochemistry in the Chemistry department. All of these departments had wildly different requirements with respect to number of classes, what type of exams acted as qualifiers, etc. It would have been really hard to cross them and keep everyone happy.
 People crossed over with collaborations and work between all of the above, but had to have an advisor in their home department, or where they were actually enrolled and getting their degree.