psstein

If you can't name a single journal it's unlikely anything you write would be accepted to "the best."

While @jbc568's reply was not convivial, I think it would be a mistake for you not to consider very carefully the guidance it offers. As a graduate student you will be expected to generate answers to your own questions. IME, using the application process to develop that skill is very beneficial.
Using your OP as an example, providing the names of what one thinks are top journals and then asking for feedback sends an entirely different message than asking for suggestions.

If your program is going to be on line, and especially if you're gong to be teaching, I very strongly recommend that you ask your department in writing for policy on how to use technology. The policy should have enough "how to," "do-s", and "do nots" that allow you as end users to protect your risk. IMO, the policy should answer questions including:
What are a T.A.'s responsibilities as a T.A. if a student does not have access to Zoom? What may T.A.'s do if a student broadcasts from his or her residence wearing controversial items of clothing, or displaying firearms, or is disruptive? Ideally, the policy will include measures for you to be reimbursed for license fees if not also network access and technology. (It's my position that departments should subsidize fully professional accounts that T.A.'s use and mandate that all section meetings be recorded., and that T.A.s be issued equipment that belongs to the school.)
I understand and share some of your frustration. I do ask that you understand that many academic institutions are realizing how dependent they are on revenue generated by people being on campus and the revenue generated by taxes on a municipal, county, and state level. In some cases, institutions may be deciding that they simply do not have a choice -- either open campus or start firing people as a broader plan of shutting down entire programs and departments.

Here's the link to a recording of the discussion.
There's a "commercial break" about a third of the way through that features a conversation that includes some folks from Deloitte. I would not fast forward through this conversation.  

I just attended an online panel discussion hosted by the Chronicle of Higher Education and sponsored by Deloitte. The topic was "Sustaining the Private College Business Model in a Global Crisis". 

The discussion was recorded and I will post a link when it becomes available.
For me, the key take away is that COVID-19 has accelerated the time of reckoning for smaller colleges and universities. These institutions have to figure out simultaneously how to reopen campuses for in person instruction and how to make the transition towards sustainable business models.
Overall, there is no change to my previous guidance. When developing a list of programs of interest, spend a significant amount of time doing your due diligence on  the parent institution's financial health and strategic plan.

However, I would add that if you are considering master's programs at a smaller school, expand the scope of your due diligence to include the risks involved in attending a school that may be in severe financial stress within the next five years. Will "guaranteed" funding really be available in year two? Will POIs be able to give you the support you need when they themselves may be under profound stress about their jobs?
I would also recommend that anyone making the decision to attend on campus classes the coming academic year take a long hard look at @TMP 's post here. 

So? The more you practice talking/writing about your research, the most polished it will be in your application materials. @Sigaba invitation to think about that was useful advice. 
Also, I think this distinction is very important: 
This is good advice (starting with what you have and then look for the vignette that helps you the most):
However, I would discourage people to use anecdotes. I am not saying that you won't be accepted because of opening with a life event (many here have), but I'd encourage you to open with a research vignette rather than a personal one. Like @AfricanusCrowther said, the SOP is about research. 

This is the kind of statement that will turn you into a chew toy in a graduate seminar as the professor doodles on a Styrofoam cup.

All someone has to do is find one example and it is off to the races. (I am presently looking at document from 1910 right now.) 
Or,  someone will look up and ask innocently "What sources have you examined to support this finding?" Unless the answer is "everything," your credibility is going to take a hit.
"I am not interested in exploring the links between..." is an example of how to say something without stepping on your own tusks.

I missed some good threads in 2014 while I was getting my heart ripped out and shown to me. #notbitter

"I'm working on my French and German reading knowledge. My grad school can administer the test; in fact, my thesis advisor has encouraged me to do it, but will the results be accepted wherever I attend?"
I agree with TMP and psstein that language exemption depends on the particular program.  In my case, I took a French graduate reading course during my MA program.  When I requested exemption at my current PhD program, the graduate director requested I submit the graded final exam (based on translation of a Foucault passage) for approval.  The director determined that the exam was rigorous enough for exemption. 
 

"I think A, B, and C are good ideas, and I will incorporate them into my thoughts on X, Y, and Z."
(and then you don't, but thank them in your acknowledgments for their engaging discussions)

Exactly.
And when someone at a conference asks you why you didn't talk about them, this skill comes in handy: "I think that is an important question/point that I will note to incorporate in my article/book" and then you don't. 

Your subject line is actually unclear.  Remember, in English, "you" can be used as a singular or plural.  The POI, a very busy department chair, may read the subject line and interpret it that you're interested in the program (i.e. working with you guys!).  If the POI did in fact open the email and see that you have made explicit connections to his work and inquiring whether he is accepting students for fall 2021, and then forwards the email on, he may (a) be socially inept (not unusual), (b) think that the DGS can handle all of your questions until to the point where s/he can longer do so and forwards the email back to the POI, or (c) all of the above plausible reasons.
I would politely respond to the DGS and say that you are excited about the program, ask whatever questions you have, and inquire whether this POI is taking students. Go from there and see what happens.

Yes, because it is important to your research trajectory, not because you are defensive about the number. 

The difference seems to be that you told a story about your journey to the House of Klio centered around personal growth and developing interests rather than offering a narrative that could be interpreted as defensive. Also, from what you've previously posted,  your personal history is compelling.

Re: Low GPAs and PhD applications
Hello everyone and welcome to those new posters. 
I want to say something to be clear about low GPAs and your urge to explain your performance. The place that you would have room for doing this is your SOP. Do not explain your GPA. Your SOP is not a story about you and the difficult semester you had. Trust me, it took me six years to finish my BA. 
The SOP is about your research: the questions that move you, the topic that you are interested in, and how these questions and these topics fit with the school you are applying to. Now, and this is very important, if something that happened to you, if something you went through, speaks to, informs, underpins your research, then you might as well talk about it. However, talk about it not in the melodramatic tone of "this happened and I got this GPA" but rather "this happened and this is what I did". The first one is defensive, the second is assertive. You want to be assertive. 
I say this based on experience. My initial SOPs were a weepy complaint of how horrible my thesis committee had been in my defense. They truly had been vicious and tanked my GPA (well, I thought so, even though it went down just a tiny bit). Thanks to a mentor and a looooooot of work, I turned my whining into something along the lines of "I incorporated the comments from the thesis committee in three published articles" (articles were, of course, my proud moment in the CV). Sounds better, right? 
 So, do not feel you owe anyone an explanation. Nobody is checking if your GPA went suddenly down in sophomore year Spring semester (actually, if someone is checking that, you don't want to work with that person). Just talk about your research, this is what get you in doctoral programs. 
My two cents. 

Seen by whom? IMO, generally accepted practices are not automatically best practices.

I am not sure that I agree with your argument that a professor or other person with power is bound by your past when it comes to making decisions about their future.

IME, decision makers form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions notwithstanding the previous work or recognition of a person under consideration. I have witnessed a department pulling the plug on a plan to offer an endowed chair to a MacArthur fellow,. That was followed by pulling the plug on another MacArthur fellow. In both cases, the individuals stepped on toes in very subtle ways.
I can think of two historians who were denied promotion. An assistant professor was fired because she appeared to pick family over "publish or perish." This decision would not have been made without the advocacy of the department chair and other women in the department. An associate professor was denied promotion because the decision makers determined that  his most important work looked like a coffee table book even though it was an entry in one of his field's most prominent series. His community rallied to him to no avail.

Not historians, Don Nakanishi was initially denied tenure at UCLA in 1987 and Lorgia García Peña was denied tenure at Harvard last year.
Ultimately, every person of color must decide which tools of accommodation and resistance to use. What I find controversial is that you're offering  guidance in absolute terms ("always"). And while that guidance is experience based,  you are much closer to the start of your journey than the midpoint.
IMO, graduate school in history transforms people in two ways. First, one goes from being a novice to someone who can create new knowledge.
Second, one receives information  on how to be a professional academic. It has been my observation that it is rare for professors to stand on someone's head and then train a graduate student on how to differentiate among what is desired, what is needed, and what is necessary. Instead, the information is communicated with increased subtlety -- an ethereal  remark in the margin of an assignment or draft, a slow nod delivered with a slight smile and a glimmer in the eyes. After that, it can appear one is getting what one wants when something else may be happening.
Sometimes, it is years later over dinner and drinks that one can throw back one's head and laugh "Oh, so that's what you meant..." But before then, one can spend time stepping on toes when, sometimes, an "Excuse me, may I..." followed by a closed door conversation (or two) can turn an obstacle into a stepping stone or an opponent into an ally.
$0.02/YMMV

ZeeMore21--
You have misread my post. It will remain as written.

I did not question his field of study. I questioned the purpose of his decision to identify himself first in terms of his gender and his race.

His introduction as written implies that he thinks his skin color and plumbing are more important to his candidacy than what he's done as a history major, and what he wants to do as a graduate student.
The purpose of my question is to provide SBP an opportunity to consider the efficacy of this approach.

As for your closing remark "just for your sake," you might have gotten more traction had you written "for my own sake" or omitted it altogether.

Semester ended, grades submitted, students graduated. 
*cracks fingers*
I think you are wasting too much space with all the verbose sentences. "As a doctoral student at..." can simply be "At the U of P, I will study this, this, and that". Also, get rid of passive voice. I may be alone in this but do not ever justify your relevance by "filling the gap". You are not a filler. 
 
No one will read that much into the CV. Just list "Known languages". You will still have to sit for an exam. 
I understand what you are getting at, NoirFemme. However, I think @Sigaba was saying something else. I'm sure you did not go to a PhD program to improve your writing skills? A PhD, I think this is what @Sigaba was getting at, is supposed to challenge you intellectually, to open your horizons, to make ask more questions, and seek more answers (hence, the dissertation). True, many people improve their writing skills, their public speaking skills, or they discover what they want to do (or not to do for that matter) for the rest of their lives. But I don't think anyone sacrifices six years of their lives to improve some writing skills. 
And on the topic of rumor, to all applicants. Pay attention to the grapevine but do not make decisions based on what you hear. Prepare, just in case they are true, but that's it. 

@gsc you've made excellent points. I agree, the structure of programs and the academy more generally is such that it disincentivizes preparing for a non-academic career. It's frankly the biggest struggle I've had when it comes to going back.
@Sigaba, I hadn't thought about the finance angle of things. I'll have to see if I could fit that in, should I choose to return.

All those programs are fine and I think there's another poster here who works on similar questions, but the name currently eludes me. Your GRE score and GPA are fine. Some programs are dumping the GRE and I suspect to see that trend increase over time.
I'd suggest worrying about the things you can control, like your writing sample and statement of purpose.
BTW, not to discourage anyone, but I suspect the economic fallout from COVID-19 will result in more grad school applicants, but also smaller intakes than usual. Expect this cycle to be very, very competitive.

@gsc you've made excellent points. I agree, the structure of programs and the academy more generally is such that it disincentivizes preparing for a non-academic career. It's frankly the biggest struggle I've had when it comes to going back.
@Sigaba, I hadn't thought about the finance angle of things. I'll have to see if I could fit that in, should I choose to return.

The sad fact is that even when faculty want to support you, the structure of the graduate program is not flexible enough to handle students who want to take time to develop non-academic career skills and pursue internships in their field.
Faculty may sincerely want to help you achieve your professional goals outside of academia, but they probably will not be able to help you, and, in my experience, even dedicated "alt-ac" career officers (for those lucky enough to have them) will be unable to help you with many specific non-academic career interests. So if you're planning on taking six years out of your life to pursue a career outside of academia, I would do so feeling relatively confident about what you need to do to get there, and knowing that you will be allowed to take those steps, and when you will be allowed to take them. I would imagine that contacting alumni who recently did this is a must.
And all of this is assuming these jobs will be available in the medium term.

This can be a real balancing act to pull off. I’ve been ambivalent about academia since I started and tried to straddle both worlds— I’ve fit a couple internships and a very part time (quarter-time?) research assistant/ public history position into my time so far, and my advisor has been very supportive, but in general, I’ve found it difficult to acquire the non-academic work experiences and preparation that I wanted when I entered the program.
In my experience, when you come into a graduate program, there are expectations and claims about how you will spend your time and what the bulk of your energy will go towards: these are dictated by your funding package, by the structure of the program itself, by your advisor and committee, and by the general culture of the program. I think you have to be very forceful, persistent, and organized if you want to override these various claims on your time to do something else (like an internship, or a part-time gig), keeping in mind, too, that some of them (like teaching) can’t really be helped. 
The structure of graduate education often militates against the kinds of things that grad students are often advised to do to prepare for non-academic careers. For example, during the semester, a heavy teaching load will make it difficult to squeeze in a part-time gig and do your coursework or write (which you’ll need to do to finish the program). Summers are incredibly valuable currency and there will be no end of things competing for your time during them: preliminary research to help you figure out what your dissertation should be on, time spent studying for comps, time spent preparing stuff for publication, time spent doing dissertation research, time spent writing dissertation chapters, time spent teaching (you likely won’t get paid in summers, so summer teaching is an important financial lifeline, too). And of course during all this the clock is ticking on your funding package (not to mention, you know, the rest of your life— being a grad student gets old quickly.) So you have to choose wisely, and plan ahead, and think carefully about what you want to prioritize.
I ended up fitting my work experience into semesters where I was not teaching and had already finished my research, or was too early in the program to actually have diss research to do. I was fortunate to have some of these semesters built into my funding package and in other cases I made some of my own: this year I applied for a TAship with a 2-0 teaching load, which made for a busy fall semester and a spring semester free to do a 15 hr/week internship. You might see if you can create these opportunities for yourself during your program: external fellowships, alternative graduate assistantships that aren’t teaching (e.g., working in the campus writing center, or processing manuscripts at the library). (Ask prospective programs about these during accepted student days!)
Also, speaking of visit days, my undergraduate advisors told me to keep mum about my ambivalence towards the academy during prospective visits. This was well-intentioned advice, and there are still advisors and whole programs out there who have not gotten on the alt-ac bandwagon. But in retrospect I might have benefitted from asking my potential advisors up front about whether or not preparing for non-academic careers was something they’d be willing to work with me on, taking the attitude that if it wasn’t, they weren’t going to be a good fit for me anyways. I think in the past five years, and especially with coronavirus, the landscape has changed enough that you can and should freely ask this question. You really, really don’t want to arrive at your program and realize that it’s not going to be supportive of what you need and want.

I very sincerely suggest that you reconsider how you evaluate these kinds of opportunities. To paraphrase JFK, it's not what the profession does for you, it's what you do for the profession.
While a ROI approach to how the Ivory Tower is financed is probably long over due, I don't know if it is sustainable for a graduate student entering a program to gain training to join a profession in which personal relationship are generally vital to one's success. (The exception would be rock stars whose (apparent) virtuosity and charisma allow them to do what they like while being s-birds.)

But if one were to take a ROI approach, the initial fee is a one time payment for $50. Were you to put that into a savings account, in thirty years, your net would be about $1.37.