psstein

Usually, schools offer academic year-long stipend. Wisconsin, for example, pays a roughly $21,000 fellowship for first-year history students, disbursed over 9 months.

I would definitely wait.  You need more time to establish relationships with these new professors and for them to see how you work and think like a historian. They will better able to describe you and offer more concrete examples in their letters, not a write a boiler template.  You'll also be able to present a more polished writing sample and statement of purpose.  A year away from academia in preparation for the PhD has never killed anyone-- as far as I know

Studying for PhD comprehensive exams is the trick  

This is quite easy.  You're interested in the question of the body and how it functioned in the discourses of gender, beliefs, and public health in different geographical contexts. This is grounded in your interest in how cultural and scientific ideas of the body migrated from one place to another.  Physicians, magicians, and related people did travel, after all. 

Well, my strategy devolved into overusing my TA office supplies, but that's not a feasible strategy for everyone. In your case, I would recommend keeping a paper notebook/legal pad/whatever, while using the following approach (an acronym IPSO):
Issue: What is the research question?
Position: What is the thesis? How does it interact with other literature?
Support: What are the sources used? How does the author support his/her argument?
Outcome: Future avenues for research, assuming the author's argument is correct?
 

Well, my strategy devolved into overusing my TA office supplies, but that's not a feasible strategy for everyone. In your case, I would recommend keeping a paper notebook/legal pad/whatever, while using the following approach (an acronym IPSO):
Issue: What is the research question?
Position: What is the thesis? How does it interact with other literature?
Support: What are the sources used? How does the author support his/her argument?
Outcome: Future avenues for research, assuming the author's argument is correct?
 

^ this. 

Yes, there are. I know several who work for the government and make a good salary. Scientists are, in general, awful at writing.

How about going into journalism? There's nothing wrong with doing those things as a hobby as well. Finish up college and see where things stand in your life and the academia.

I agree with some qualifications. The profession is currently in crisis, in part, because the model for training graduate students is broken. The current model depends upon taking intelligent, capable people, promising them the moon, and then exploiting them as cheap labor for 6-9 years. 6-9 years is on the low side, if any of these newly minted PhDs choose to become adjuncts. Given that the humanities are in retreat practically everywhere, even at the top R1s, it is completely irresponsible to encourage students to go to graduate school with the goal of becoming professors. Accordingly, it's also worth warning people with that goal of the brutal future of the profession and the current trends, which don't paint a good picture for any sub-field.
When I was a junior in college, not all too long ago, I told my professors (at a very well-known East Coast college), that I wanted to go to grad school. With one exception, they all told me "don't do it."

Since you are interested in becoming a professor, you might do your diligence to conduct "informational interviews" with various professors about their jobs.  What is it like? What are the best parts? Worst parts?  What could be improved in academia? How do they have their research funded? (Pay close attention to this one, this is definitely true if you are NOT in an Ivy or wealthy public institution like Berkeley and Michigan) What was graduate school like? (Pay close attention once again how long ago the professor received his/her PhD) How many times did it take to land an assistant professor position? Try to meet with "younger" professors as they will have a better grasp on the "new" realities of the PhD and the job market since the financial crash of 2008.
Since a huge part of the job is teaching (even in a research-intensive university), you might want to look into opportunity to tutor to start developing your teaching persona.
Take the time to read The Professor Is In blog. She has tags for "graduate school admissions" (or something like that)

I partly agree with you. I think the demise of the SLAC has been greatly exaggerated; the oft-quoted figure of "50% of colleges will close in the next 10 years," based on speaking with SLAC faculty and staff, just doesn't seem true. What will happen, IMO, is that colleges with fewer than 1000 students will encounter significant issues. It's tough enough for those colleges to keep the lights on/pay faculty/pensions/etc. as it currently stands. I don't see SLACs, writ large "ceasing to exist as a concept."
As for the meat of your post, yes. One of the major reasons I left Wisconsin was the vanishing job market. I couldn't justify 7+ years for a degree with dubious value outside of academia. (Yes, yes, I know about alt-ac jobs, but I have a very strong, probably idiosyncratic belief about the whole "alt-ac" push). I do agree that the job market is bad, and I'd add that students at 90% of programs have no chance at TT academic jobs. Even in the top 10% of programs, you probably have a 50% chance at best.
My solution is simple: 75% of all graduate programs should suspend admissions. The remaining 25% should cut intake in half. There's also a more targeted, less brutal way to do this, but it would require having the AHA serve as an accreditation agency.

If you're going to apply to St. Andrews, you ought to know that, while getting in will be easier than most top programs, getting a funded position will be damn near impossible as a non-UK/EU citizen, and is about equivalent to an Ivy. I also can't imagine that the outcomes from St. Andrews are all that great.
I'd normally recommend you apply to Cambridge instead, but my understanding is that Schaffer is ailing and preparing to retire.

It is never too early...
...to start managing one's expectations.
Academic departments generally and (maybe) history departments in particular are black boxes inside of black boxes inside of boxes. The great fit/perfect match on paper can end up being a soul crushing career killing pairing that one does not see clearly until one is preparing for qualifying exams.
Please keep in mind that Southern Cal is sorting out a number of scandals in addition to "varsity blues." IMO it is incumbent upon applicants to do a thorough due diligence. This process should include asking persons of interest and points of contact tough questions that are diplomatically phrased. What steps are the department, college, and university taking to assess the impact of these scandals on the reputation of the USC "brand" in the academic job market?

I partly agree with you. I think the demise of the SLAC has been greatly exaggerated; the oft-quoted figure of "50% of colleges will close in the next 10 years," based on speaking with SLAC faculty and staff, just doesn't seem true. What will happen, IMO, is that colleges with fewer than 1000 students will encounter significant issues. It's tough enough for those colleges to keep the lights on/pay faculty/pensions/etc. as it currently stands. I don't see SLACs, writ large "ceasing to exist as a concept."
As for the meat of your post, yes. One of the major reasons I left Wisconsin was the vanishing job market. I couldn't justify 7+ years for a degree with dubious value outside of academia. (Yes, yes, I know about alt-ac jobs, but I have a very strong, probably idiosyncratic belief about the whole "alt-ac" push). I do agree that the job market is bad, and I'd add that students at 90% of programs have no chance at TT academic jobs. Even in the top 10% of programs, you probably have a 50% chance at best.
My solution is simple: 75% of all graduate programs should suspend admissions. The remaining 25% should cut intake in half. There's also a more targeted, less brutal way to do this, but it would require having the AHA serve as an accreditation agency.

I've heard similar things about the difficulties both in securing funding and job prospects due the emphasis on research, the worries are certainly there. The big draw for me is Richard Whatmore as he's done quite important work (for my purposes) with regards to incorporating Geneva into broader conversations about the 18th century.

This might sound like an odd suggestion but have you considered NYU -- it may not obvious from their profiles but there are a lot of profs there who interests intersect with yours... maybe look into Julie Livingston and everyone connected to the Atlantic worlds program. 

If you're going to apply to St. Andrews, you ought to know that, while getting in will be easier than most top programs, getting a funded position will be damn near impossible as a non-UK/EU citizen, and is about equivalent to an Ivy. I also can't imagine that the outcomes from St. Andrews are all that great.
I'd normally recommend you apply to Cambridge instead, but my understanding is that Schaffer is ailing and preparing to retire.

Hi all! Very happy to have stumbled upon this thread. I just graduated college in May, and am applying to PhD programs for Fall 2020. I'm very glad I took the year to prepare - I never thought just sending emails could be so stressful! I wrote my honors thesis on the voices of midwives in seventeenth-century London, focusing on the ways they held authority outside of the birthing room through an analysis of their presences in popular print and criminal trials. I'm hoping to focus in my grad work on women, gender, and sexuality as they relate to medicine and science in early modern Europe (and I'm open to Atlantic World as well).
I'm proficient in Spanish and have taken a year of Latin, and will have completed a year of Italian as well by the time I (hopefully!) enter grad school. For all those of you on the thread planning to learn Latin on your own, www.magistrula.com is a great resource for practicing all those nasty declensions
In terms of research, I'm very inspired by the work of people like Katharine Park, Paula Findlen, Mary Fissell, Carlo Ginzburg, and Londa Schiebinger in particular. I'm applying to 8 programs as of now, I would say about 4 of which feel like a really great fit. Currently, I'm trying to figure out how to email potential advisors whose work I find very interesting but divergent enough from my experience/immediate interests that I have to explain why I'm emailing them, lol.
Very happy to have some virtual people along for the ride with me! Best of luck everyone  
-Han

Haha hi!! Always happy to meet more HistSci friends!
Stanford, Brown, Johns Hopkins, and USC are the schools I'm most excited about - there are at least 2 profs in the dept at each school who feel like perfect matches for me. The other schools I'm applying to are UCSB, Yale, UPenn, and UW-Madison, where there are profs whose work/methods line up with mine but aren't as perfect a fit as the others. Still very excited about them though, of course!

I almost spit out my wine just reading that the thesis is considered "dead" in your program.
Do investigate the outcomes of students who did the thesis and those who did not, and whether those who went onto the PhD did do a thesis.
Do know that teaching does take up a LOT of time. If you're thinking of teaching instead of the PhD, find out the licensing requirements of your prospective state.
Do know that not everyone is passionate about research as you are. Those who take the teaching internship are in the MA just to teach in 6-12, not much interest in the PhD.
If the PhD is what you want, then who cares what other students do?  Just find a supportive thesis adviser who will help you see this project through. One of the toughest things one has to learn in a PhD program is to move away from the pack of group-thinkers and fly solo.

If possible, I would try to find out if there's a difference in outcomes between students going onto the PhD without the thesis and students who continue to the PhD after the thesis. It may be the case that students who write the thesis make their way to better programs. Or it may be the opposite. I don't know.

Similarly, I would perform research on potential advisors and decision makers in doctoral programs of interest. Did they write master's theses? (Because professional academic historians are often drawn to the familiar -- academic pedigree, fields of interest, paths traveled.)

It depends. A master's thesis is kind of a camel - too long for an article, too short (and too early in your career) for a book. That's a lot of work for little purpose.

A thesis may help you focus, which seems to be something of a constant refrain, but if you decide not to do it, I would try to have an article under review instead by the time you apply to PhD programs. This is what I did.

FWIW, I produced a master's report that ended up being, I'm told, longer than many thesis. (I've not had coffee this morning, I can't remember why I picked the report option over the thesis option.)
The report served as a writing sample that helped me get into another program when I 'transferred' and (to @AfricanusCrowther's point) the job I currently have, which is bean counting and writing reports about beans.
If you pick a good topic and frame it well, your thesis can help you get your head around what you want to do for a dissertation. On the other hand, you may end up with an advisor who may want you to pick a different topic for your dissertation for reasons that are vague, if not self serving. (But I'm not bitter.)
(I am rambling. Coffee needed.)
TLDR. The thesis can help you be a more competitive applicant for doctoral programs, provide invaluable experience performing research and crafting historiographically significant arguments, and help you in the job market if you leave the Ivory Tower. But I recommend that you pick a topic informed by the understanding that you may face obstacles if you want to use the thesis as a basis for a doctoral dissertation.