Warelin

Given that the OP used a number grade, it's possible that the OP isn't from the United States and that their country has different metrics. In Canada, an A is as "low" as an 80. In Australia, an A was as low as an 85. Getting the equivalent of an A in Australia is harder to earn in Australia than it is in the USA though because of how they grade. Most people in Australia end up getting the equivalent of a B or C during graduation.
 
I think the majority of professors understand that applicants are a nervous wreck during application season and that students may not realize how busy professors are.
My main concern here is this: Did you ( @CoconutAvocado) ask your professors if they could write you a strong letter of recommendation? Simply asking for a recommendation letter leaves most recommenders to feel forced into it. Asking if they could write a strong letter allows them a way to "bow out" if they feel they can't produce a strong enough letter. I'd also keep in mind that they're doing you a favor. Your letter will also likely signal how they view you as a fellow colleague in their letter even if they don't specfically mention it in the letter.

Editing is a very important skill to have. However, I don't think I would worry about this. 500 words is about 2 pages double-spaced. I don't think anyone is going to sit there and count the number of words you used as long as its within about 5ish percent of their request. I would be more concerned if they requested 500 words and you gave them 600-700 words. I think you'd be best served by focusing on other aspects of your application.

Listen guys, I spent there last 4 years trying to get in to a program.. This discussion board can be disheartening, and you may feel like you'll never get in because everyone else is so impressive.. But there is hope!
 
 I have loved this field for the last 6 years. I had a tough undergrad (2.8) GPA, took the GRE's 3 times never did well despite numerous classes (V145 Q 144 W 3.5). However my experiences as an SLP-A and LOR'S were amazing! Last year was going to be my last year applying.. I'm glad I didn't give up. You shouldn't either. IT'LL HAPPEN.
 

Hi GP! Welcome to GC!

In terms of programs, have you looked at where the authors you enjoy writing about got their degrees from? I'd suggest searching articles you're interested in and looking up where those scholars got their degrees from. It might help get you closer to programs you're interested in.

I'd double-check with the grad school to see if fee waivers are available. Additionally, there are some schools that might be willing to accept an official gre score after acceptance.

In recent cycles, Johns Hopkins and WUSTL have accepted unofficial GRE scores. I think their websites indicate elsewise but I remember them allowing it during the previous cycle. I think it's usually the English Coordinator/ Assistant to the Graduate Director who fields these type of questions.

Editing is a very important skill to have. However, I don't think I would worry about this. 500 words is about 2 pages double-spaced. I don't think anyone is going to sit there and count the number of words you used as long as its within about 5ish percent of their request. I would be more concerned if they requested 500 words and you gave them 600-700 words. I think you'd be best served by focusing on other aspects of your application.

Not necessarily. A lot of programs in the humanities wait until after deadlines have passed so they can evaluate applicants at the same time.

I don't think admission alone is a golden ticket alone. Oftentimes, people accepted into Ivy League schools are extremely ambitious and have a set of credentials that distinguish themselves from other people. That ambition would likely have them succeed anywhere and isn't limited to just the Ivy League. Oftentimes, funding begets funding which makes it easier to win future fellowships if you currently have a fellowship.

Small note here:
The April 15 resolution applies to accepting a funded offer for the fall semester; it isn't a date whch you have to respond to all grad schools by. There are also some colleges that are not part of the April 15 resolution.
Did any of the schools ask for a specific date to respond to them by? The deadline for Spring often varies by the program because very few universities offer spring admission. If you're certain that you aren't going to accept a school's offer, it's best to turn down their offer as soon as you're sure. 

This is generally not acceptable at most places and will cause you to burn bridges in a number of scenarios. I'd recommend against it. A deferral is meant to allow you to start at a later date provided everything stays the same.
I think the best policy here is to be honest with both schools. Tell them what would make things easier for you to accept their offer but be prepared to accept their offer if they offer what you're looking for.

This is generally not acceptable at most places and will cause you to burn bridges in a number of scenarios. I'd recommend against it. A deferral is meant to allow you to start at a later date provided everything stays the same.
I think the best policy here is to be honest with both schools. Tell them what would make things easier for you to accept their offer but be prepared to accept their offer if they offer what you're looking for.

This is generally not acceptable at most places and will cause you to burn bridges in a number of scenarios. I'd recommend against it. A deferral is meant to allow you to start at a later date provided everything stays the same.
I think the best policy here is to be honest with both schools. Tell them what would make things easier for you to accept their offer but be prepared to accept their offer if they offer what you're looking for.

I doubt they would check for plagiarism, they've got enough work as is. Just don't be egregious and you'll be fine.

I think the important thing to remember is that your university wouldn't have accepted you if they didn't believe you could handle their workload. There are more people applying that are qualified to do the work, but they chose you. They believe in you. You should too!

GRE scores aren’t independent. If you assume scores are normally distributed, and you know the means and correlations (posted above), then you could work out (or simulate) the probability of someone scoring higher on all three sections than you. In your case, I would bet it gives a number higher than 0.05. 

There are a few reasons why thinking like this is relatively impractical/your theory is slightly incorrect.
First of all, it's not practical to think about where your overall rank is without a proper ordering on the sections (i.e., a way to weight each of the sections). Without this, it's impossible to say whether a 80 V, 90 Q is better or a 90 V, 80 Q. If you weigh all of the sections equally, then you get the Irwin-Hall distribution, that edward130603 mentioned (intuition behind this is that if your true expectation is 50th percentile, then getting 60-70 multiple times is more telling of your true rank than getting it once). 
Secondly, you've found an upper bound to what percentile your score is. The probability that you calculated is the probability that someone beats you on all 3 categories (which would be ranked higher than you regardless of how the sections are weighted). You can go the other way and find the lower bound on your rank (0.69*0.58*0.59 = 24th percentile). Thus, what we show is that your true overall percentile is somewhere between 24th and 95th - seemingly not very useful. 
Feels like the safest way to sort of "unbiased"-ly determine what your rank is is an average of your percentiles. Once again, thinking about this kind of stuff isn't really that important/not what the admissions committee would likely be thinking about, but taking an average is how I would do it.

This is the probability someone scores better than you on all three sections. I think you can use that as a performance metric, but it is not a percentile (i.e. the top 5.3382% interpretation is not valid).
We can take another overall metric of performance to be the sum of the percentiles. Given your assumption, the three percentiles are i.i.d. Uniform (0,1) random variables, so their sum has the Irwin-Hall distribution with n=3. Using your example, the sum of the percentiles is 186/100, which is the 75.4 percentile for Irwin-Hall distribution with n=3.
In reality, the three scores are quite correlated due to other factors such as time spent studying, test-taking ability, etc.

This may be helpful to you: GRE General Test Interpretive Data Guide from ETS
The scores are correlated, and the correlations are published:
"The correlation between Verbal Reasoning and Quantitative Reasoning scores is.35, the correlation between Verbal Reasoning and Analytical Writing scores is.68, and the correlation between Quantitative Reasoning and Analytical Writing scores is.16."  

I think the important thing to remember is that your university wouldn't have accepted you if they didn't believe you could handle their workload. There are more people applying that are qualified to do the work, but they chose you. They believe in you. You should too!

I've gone ahead and moved this to the Philosophy forum for you. In the future, feel free to message me if you've posted in the wrong forum.

If you want to discuss your list, I'd be more than happy to answer any questions you have.

I would try not to think of any schools as "back up" since that term doesn't really exist at this level. There are people who were accepted at places which receive more than 200 applicants and were also rejected by schools that receive significantly fewer applications. I would make sure that the schools that you apply to have people that would be a good fit for the type of work you want to do.
Graduate School is part of a number game, but "fit" is more important. I'd submit as many applications as you have time to work on, could imagine yourself living in that city and being happy with that school and department's culture, and could afford.  SOPs take time and involve a lot of time to get to know the department you're applying to. Programs can tell when they're not being customized specifically to them.
 
I'm confused on this one. Johns Hopkins doesn't have a medievalist in their English department. They have two 'early modernists' but that's a different focus.

Thank you to all of those who have contributed to these threads in the past few days. I've  run some calculations to update the COL index for all numbers and have them sorted automatically with as many current figures as I could find. In terms of how far your stipend can go in a city, the top 15 schools ranking are as follows:

1. Duke University
1. Princeton University
3. University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)
4. Emory
5. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
6. Johns Hopkins University
6. University of Chicago (UChicago)
6. Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL)
9. Rice University
9. Yale University
11. University of Chicago
12. University of Michigan
13. Brown University
13. Southern Methodist University (SMU)
15. University of Notre Dame

While there are other programs that might pay more in stipends, the cities they're located in are very expensive. However, that shouldn't stop you from applying if it's great fit.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XNJR4IhOJ56zd7zLuVSUK7h054dBRNvyiC7iStCOsxo/
 
Last year, I started the process of making an updated version of funding packages with the help of students accepted into programs. The list isn't complete but I hope it provides a more complete version of what universities expect in exchange for their funding. It is open-access so edits are welcome.