psstein

Sure, part of it has to do with the increasing hyper-specialization of the field, to the point where the general public has significant issues engaging with any of the major literature. This is basically the case made in The History Manifesto, so I'd encourage you to read it. The general public is largely interested in questions of military history and adjacent fields. The issue, however, is that military history is in some disrepute in the professional field. I'm not a military historian, but there's a poster who is ( @Sigaba, your and Col. Tigh's presence is requested!) and can speak more intelligently as to it. In my program, which is one of the major nexi for military history, the military historians are always looked at somewhat askance.
My next point goes to that, which is that the humanities in general do a very poor job selling what they can offer. We live in a world where, to quote Oscar Wilde, man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing. State legislatures and many people see humanities and liberal arts as "worthless degrees" or "not real degrees" because they don't provide an easily identifiable skill, unlike, for instance, computer science. The humanities provide the ability to critically engage with ideas and, ideally, the ability to express ideas in clear, coherent fashions.
Finally, there's just the brutal reality of the job market. If you want a tenured academic job, there are only about 20 (give or take 5) programs that provide a reasonable chance at that, especially if you want a tenured job at a research oriented institution. Far too many students each year graduate from middling programs who have no chance of an academic job. There may be little difference between someone from Kansas and Princeton, but, the Princeton candidate will get the offer 95% of the time. It's a structural issue that there's really no way around, despite Kansas' having an excellent historian of the US West.
 

I'm sure there is, but I couldn't think of one off the top of my head. This may be a case of someone being right for the wrong reasons.

Sure, part of it has to do with the increasing hyper-specialization of the field, to the point where the general public has significant issues engaging with any of the major literature. This is basically the case made in The History Manifesto, so I'd encourage you to read it. The general public is largely interested in questions of military history and adjacent fields. The issue, however, is that military history is in some disrepute in the professional field. I'm not a military historian, but there's a poster who is ( @Sigaba, your and Col. Tigh's presence is requested!) and can speak more intelligently as to it. In my program, which is one of the major nexi for military history, the military historians are always looked at somewhat askance.
My next point goes to that, which is that the humanities in general do a very poor job selling what they can offer. We live in a world where, to quote Oscar Wilde, man knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing. State legislatures and many people see humanities and liberal arts as "worthless degrees" or "not real degrees" because they don't provide an easily identifiable skill, unlike, for instance, computer science. The humanities provide the ability to critically engage with ideas and, ideally, the ability to express ideas in clear, coherent fashions.
Finally, there's just the brutal reality of the job market. If you want a tenured academic job, there are only about 20 (give or take 5) programs that provide a reasonable chance at that, especially if you want a tenured job at a research oriented institution. Far too many students each year graduate from middling programs who have no chance of an academic job. There may be little difference between someone from Kansas and Princeton, but, the Princeton candidate will get the offer 95% of the time. It's a structural issue that there's really no way around, despite Kansas' having an excellent historian of the US West.
 

Start subscribing to Inside Higher Ed if you haven't.  All of these funding cut news don't surprise me though I'm very skeptical at the claim that Harvard cut down from 20 to 6.  Although my program has very slowly reduce the cohort size (from 20 to 15), the University just told us, one more cut.  Whee.
As for @Sigaba's comment...  this is only the beginning of many, many funding cycles you'll go through.  How am I killing time as I await my writing fellowship news? (Deadlines were back in October/December... for March/April announcements)  By reading, reading, reading,  And oh, writing.  Days go by. Get lost in the past.

For what it's worth, when I met the director of Graduate Studies while visiting Harvard (he's who I'm hoping for as an advisor) he maintained that they were taking about 20ish people in the program. This was in late October. Perhaps something has drastically changed since then, but every other professor I met was very upfront about the possibility that the cohort might be downsized but he said nothing of the sort. 

Programs anticipate these changes. The other day an advisor was like "what did you say you were going to do in your SoP again" and then we laughed together about how terrible an idea it was--honestly just worry about these things once you're in the program. You can't know in advance what you're going to end up doing and/or who'll you end up working with, and if the issue is as minor as preferring to work with a person you mentioned by name but didn't specifically mention wanting as the primary advisor, you'll be fine. 

I might be a bit hard on UVA, though I went to undergrad at its academic rival! 
It's not a bad place, but there are far better. I think the placement record speaks for itself, though. Success in TT placement is usually a good sign for a program.

Only Penn, Hopkins, and MIT interview. All three are tiny programs who want to see how well potential applicants get along with faculty and other graduate students.
Often similar academic preparation, similar background, etc.

About Harvard: when I applied two years ago, there was a "language preparation" section of the application, or at least I recall one. Maybe someone screwed up this year and didn't put one in.
Sciences tend to hear earlier, in my experience. Univ. of Minnesota accepted me into its History of Science PhD in late December, but that was apparently an extraordinarily early acceptance. Most programs tell you in February/early March.

I can't imagine it'll hurt you, unless you were absolutely abysmal. That being said, one of the important things to keep in mind is that AHA is so huge you can easily get lost in the shuffle. What I mean is that, since AHA has so many distractions, unless you were really memorable (good or otherwise), it may not have much of an impact. I visited the poster session last year (in DC) and found them mixed. Some of them were really good, interesting projects. Others were not. Just because you have an idea doesn't mean sharing it with the rest of the world... one or two especially stuck in the latter category.
in a very succinct way: your acceptance or rejection probably will come down to other factors, some of which are unrelated to your accomplishments or suitability as a candidate.

I can't imagine it'll hurt you, unless you were absolutely abysmal. That being said, one of the important things to keep in mind is that AHA is so huge you can easily get lost in the shuffle. What I mean is that, since AHA has so many distractions, unless you were really memorable (good or otherwise), it may not have much of an impact. I visited the poster session last year (in DC) and found them mixed. Some of them were really good, interesting projects. Others were not. Just because you have an idea doesn't mean sharing it with the rest of the world... one or two especially stuck in the latter category.
in a very succinct way: your acceptance or rejection probably will come down to other factors, some of which are unrelated to your accomplishments or suitability as a candidate.

My advisor once was a book review editor for a major journal in my sub-discipline. She said a reviewer sent a review in which noted every factual error in the book, something like 2 single spaced pages. Some people are just cranks.

Princeton's committee meets notoriously late, or so I'm told.

My advisor once was a book review editor for a major journal in my sub-discipline. She said a reviewer sent a review in which noted every factual error in the book, something like 2 single spaced pages. Some people are just cranks.

You're over the 90% barrier for verbal. Unless you applied to do history of mathematics, the rest of your scores are fine.

You're over the 90% barrier for verbal. Unless you applied to do history of mathematics, the rest of your scores are fine.

Princeton's committee meets notoriously late, or so I'm told.

GRE scores are thinly veiled extortion.

GRE scores are thinly veiled extortion.

Congratulations! May it be the first of many!

Oh, for an MA do whatever you want. That many schools is pretty overkill, but MA apps, unlike PhD apps, are a numbers game.
You can disagree with me all you want, but the fact remains that Vandy has, as of 2015, placed exactly 1 graduate in a TT job in the past 7-10 years. That's not a strong or highly-ranked program. Of that list, only Princeton, Davis, and UNC really upper tier.
Edit: in fact, I count only 10 tenure or tenure track professors from Vandy overall. Compare that with 324 from Harvard

This isn't grad school related, but I'm so excited that I had to tell someone... I got the news today that I was awarded a grant! My first ever!

So long as the letters arrive before the committee meets, it shouldn't pose an issue.

GPA and GRE scores are fairly unimportant unless they're absolutely horrid. Yours are not. 
Success or failure hinges on your fit, application materials, and things outside the realm of your control. I didn't get funding from a program for political reasons (my PoI and another faculty member were very excited by my application, but they didn't have enough sway). I was rejected from another program after learning the amount of stipend and going through a day long interview, in part because that small department decided to take 3/4 other students in early modern. Yet another program has an internal war between philosophers and historians, and the philosophers hold the purse strings. I got an unfunded MA, which my PoI there said was a function of philosophy wanting to stay on top.
I'm not telling you these anecdotes because I think they're super interesting. My point is that there's a whole number of items you can't control. Your PoI may take ill and have to go on medical leave. S/he may die three days after your application goes in (I know multiple people whose advisors died during their careers; one is now a faculty member here). S/he may get insensibly drunk and lead to a police standoff in his/her office (A well-known person in my field did this). 
Your stats are your stats- they're not changing. You sound like you've done a bang-up job on your materials, which is what matter most.
From my old undergrad advisor (and now friend), the SoP and writing sample are where the application is made or broken.

You are right in that there is no point in debating the issue further. On the other hand, I still cannot see how I failed to respect the people that I have engaged with during the discussion. I simply believe that the placement record does not lie, and that although one should not go to Columbia, Harvard, or Princeton if they are not a good fit, the fact remains that those colleges have much better placement records across different fields than Wisconsin. Of course, there will always be exceptions and extraordinary professors everywhere, but I think that it is important to recognize general trends and not simply to shrug them off by saying that "everything depends on your particular case."