psstein

don't be afraid to ask the SAME questions to multiple people to get different perspectives. Being a Jew myself, I'm passing along this joke, "Go to New York and ask 20 Jews the same question and you will get 20 different answers."  But look for common patterns, at least.
Going into my final year, I do think asking questions about all stages of the PhD program are important.  To add the above:
When you are with graduate students, do not be afraid to ask what kind of mental health services are available on campus. The stigma has weakened and caring for one's self is crucial, especially in the coursework and exam years when levels of stress are the highest.
Take a close look at the TA stipend and ask the graduate students (and the graduate coordinator) how the stipend is calculated and how much it has increased over the years, and whether it keeps pace with the inflation. 
Ask about relationship between TAing and undergraduate enrollment.  What happens if the course is underenrolled? Do you still grade? Or do you get assigned to an administrative or research duty?
For public schools, how has the department budget been in the past 5 years?  Has the department been able to maintain consistent level of support? (Red flag: When things get cut)
 
My #1 advice? (I've recommended this for years.)  Before you go, write down a ranked list of programs from top choice to bottom and write out a rationale for each one.  Be reasonable and realistic.  Share it with a trusted professor or mentor. Because I promise you, you will get emotional and overwhelmed during campus visit to think straight afterward and you will need a written reminder.  I did rank my two programs and wrote out pros and cons of each, visited both campuses, discovered that I loved one campus so much that I wanted to commit to it, then my adviser knocked sense in me and reminded me of why the other program was my top choice.  Eight years later, I'm glad she did.

IME, ABDs who have had some time to recover from qualifying exams offer better / more balanced guidance than first and second year students who have not been asked to bury any skeletons (to say nothing of sodden burlap sacks that may or may not have something moving inside).
Of course, I'm kidding. The sodden burlap sack will definitely have something still living inside. Because why else would you be asked to bury something other than so it could become a skeleton. Duh.

Departments can/do/will hide attrition--ask students in 3rd year and above how many people were in their cohort when they started. Ask how funding has changed and how the department has handled it. Ask what kind of support there is when it comes to grants--personally, I cannot overstate how useful it has been to have substantial grant-writing workshops built into our requirements. Ask people what it's like to take exams (at schools where there appear to be regimented requirements around exams, ask around to find out if those are in fact more flexible--and ask if they're more flexible for some people than others [better to know this stuff now than to be overly optimistic]). Ask who's going to be the DGS in the coming years and work out how students feel about that prof. First years don't actually know much about the program but some will think they do (I realize this sounds harsh but I wish I'd had this word of warning before visits). Sometimes at a visit you will meet a lot of chuffed first years and it can be misleading, so try to talk to people across varying fields, in the various years. If there are social events then go to them and ask honest questions--grad school is a really weird job to commit to, and I strongly advise forgetting about your future dreams for a bit and asking what it's like, materially, spiritually, etc. (I like etc) to be in a given program--especially if you're going to move, leave a job, uproot your family...
 

The obstacles you faced included:
Graduate degrees in education are not highly regarded outside of schools of education (and even in some departments in schools of education) Your field (as described) may still be too "traditional" for the current gate keepers of the profession. You have what can be called a check list approach to graduate admissions. A challenge of such approach is that, with few exceptions, most applicants are competing against others who have check lists that are just as good. A second challenge is that the check list approach puts one in a competitive disadvantage against applicants who approach graduate school admissions as part of professional training. Going forward, I recommend that you do more to comport yourself as what you are: a historian. Put more effort into reading, thinking, studying, speaking, thinking (again), and writing as a historian. From this perspective, your grades matter less, who edited what matters less, who wrote your LoRs matters less.** What matters more and more, what other historians notice and remember, is how you contribute to conversations about the past and will make increasingly refined contributions with training, experience, and support.

________________________________________
** It doesn't matter who writes your LoR if the letter doesn't speak candidly about your potential as a historian. Knowing what's being said about you in a LoR is a potential warning flag that it isn't written with as much candor as one needs.

Off the top of my head, widespread attrition, insane times to completion (relative to field-- nobody expects a Russian history dissertation to finish in 5 years), poor/unreported placement, or advisor issues. The last one is something you'll likely learn at any visit weekend. As I've said before, grad students don't mind being blunt about faculty's reputation.
@Sigaba isn't joking about the bathroom thing. There's not much more annoying than having the nearest restroom three floors above you, or having to pay a deposit for a key that opens all of one door.

Off the top of my head, widespread attrition, insane times to completion (relative to field-- nobody expects a Russian history dissertation to finish in 5 years), poor/unreported placement, or advisor issues. The last one is something you'll likely learn at any visit weekend. As I've said before, grad students don't mind being blunt about faculty's reputation.
@Sigaba isn't joking about the bathroom thing. There's not much more annoying than having the nearest restroom three floors above you, or having to pay a deposit for a key that opens all of one door.

In the strongest possible terms, I advise against the use of "et cetera" and "etc." Next fall, you will be in an intensely rigorous environment where words mean things. The last thing you want your words to indicate is that you don't take your own concerns and interests seriously.

In addition to the guidance you will find if you follow @gsc's recommendations, I suggest that one reconnoiter those areas on campus where one will spend a lot of time. Do the libraries have enough of the right kinds of books given one's fields of interest? Will one have to share common study areas with less serious students? What are the walking distances like from points of interest to parking facilities and/or transit stops? What is the food like? And, to put it directly, how far away are the bathrooms that provide the highest levels of privacy, cleanliness, and optimal water pressure? Because in the coming years, you will have opportunities to understand that sometimes, it's better to be George than Kramer.

 
 

Unless your heart is 1000% set on somewhere and there's absolutely nothing you could experience to make you choose otherwise, yes.
You might go to a campus visit and find that you can't stand the grad students and the most interesting thing in town is a supermarket.

Unless your heart is 1000% set on somewhere and there's absolutely nothing you could experience to make you choose otherwise, yes.
You might go to a campus visit and find that you can't stand the grad students and the most interesting thing in town is a supermarket.

I would send a followup email after all the decisions are out and make it clear that this program is (if it's true) your top choice. I would reiterate how you think your project would fit well into the strengths of the department faculty and how much you look forward to attending.
Stealing a leaf from @Sigaba, I am very wary of the way "fit" has mutated from explaining how a graduate student's project intersects with faculty interests and how that graduate student would meld with the department, to a seeming catch-all about the applicant's needs and desires. 

Unless your heart is 1000% set on somewhere and there's absolutely nothing you could experience to make you choose otherwise, yes.
You might go to a campus visit and find that you can't stand the grad students and the most interesting thing in town is a supermarket.

Unless your heart is 1000% set on somewhere and there's absolutely nothing you could experience to make you choose otherwise, yes.
You might go to a campus visit and find that you can't stand the grad students and the most interesting thing in town is a supermarket.

I would send a followup email after all the decisions are out and make it clear that this program is (if it's true) your top choice. I would reiterate how you think your project would fit well into the strengths of the department faculty and how much you look forward to attending.
Stealing a leaf from @Sigaba, I am very wary of the way "fit" has mutated from explaining how a graduate student's project intersects with faculty interests and how that graduate student would meld with the department, to a seeming catch-all about the applicant's needs and desires. 

I would send a followup email after all the decisions are out and make it clear that this program is (if it's true) your top choice. I would reiterate how you think your project would fit well into the strengths of the department faculty and how much you look forward to attending.
Stealing a leaf from @Sigaba, I am very wary of the way "fit" has mutated from explaining how a graduate student's project intersects with faculty interests and how that graduate student would meld with the department, to a seeming catch-all about the applicant's needs and desires. 

Sure, but is it presentable in time to send it to a journal and get reviewer's comments back, ie. at least a year out? Actual peer review is one of the best critiques one can have for a writing sample, but don't abuse your colleagues by sending them something that's not ready, is what I was trying to say. 
 
 

Hoping to hear from William and Mary soon. There doesn't seem to be a consistent arrival of information via the results page for them. 

Since my field is church history, my applications straddle history and religious studies departments, and so far the religion folks seem to be moving faster. Got accepted to my No. 1 choice yesterday (yay!) and rejected from my local choice today (boo!) – which means our family is almost definitely moving this summer. Both of them are religion programs. My three holdouts are all history programs. Come on, history folks! My children (and me) would like some certainty!

My take is somewhat similar to @OHSP's. You seem to be focused on metrics at the expense of defining yourself as the historian you are now and the historian you seek to be.
The way you describe your work as a master's student is, IMO, problematic. It seems to me that you're checking items off a list rather than demonstrating how you've developed as a historian. Your reluctance to disclose even generally your proposed project is also problematic. It speaks to a state of mind more focused on one's individual goals at the expense of the needs of the profession. If you're as familiar with the historiography as you suggest, you should be able to present a thumbnail of your topic without disclosing methods and sources that are ground breaking. But then that raises another issue given how often historians share source materials and ideas with others working on similar projects.
I've been trying to phrase the following for three days, let's see if I get it right. From your posts on this BB, you strike me as a person who is not as giving as others. It seems to me that you're much more focused on what people and programs can do for you rather than what you can contribute to the profession of academic history.
Case in point, the value you place on two POIs based upon how well they're known. Name recognition can help, but the way you phrase it is controversial. As written, you are suggesting that your masters thesis is more worthy of notice than your undergraduate thesis because of your advisor's name recognition. IME, this kind of valuation of established academics simply does not work.

Hm, that's not quite what I was getting at. Of course you should be a different applicant after completing your MA!
What I mean is this: what flaws did you identify in your application the first time around, and what methods did you try to address those issues? Are any still outstanding? Do you think some solutions were not as effective as you had hoped? 
For example, when I got rejected in my first round and before my MA, I looked at other candidates who got accepted to the tier schools I wanted to go to, and decided that I needed to add a language, bring up my GPA by a LOT, craft a better writing sample which specifically made use of the language fluencies I claimed to have, and to aggressively consider my fit with the particular professors I applied to.
So I came up with a plan. I took reading German, got a 3.9, took a seminar paper, presented it at a conference, and sent it to a journal (a GREAT way to get WS feedback if you have something presentable). My list of schools the second time around looked almost nothing like the first time, and I spent a great deal of time on the final paragraph of my SOP which argued for my fit for a particular school. 
So: did you have a plan? How did it work out? Do you have enough information to make another one? You shouldn't feel the need to answer such questions here! But this sort of rigorous self-reflection is immeasurably helpful in all aspects of adult life. 

Yes, it's how they fund their PhD programs ?

As a Yale prof told a friend of mine when he was a prospective, "You know, John, New Haven - it's not as bad as people say."

That's because cohort sizes of 20 are quite frankly irresponsible.

I'm not very concerned with the institution, just the market.

I'm one of them (though I still don't believe it's real)! I'm early modern Europe/gender and sexuality, and my email was from Findlen!

I did not get in to Penn but haven't had a chance to update my results onto the page. I was accepted at two of my schools though so yay options?