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Decided on Penn!
I spoke to my prospective supervisor at length and figured Penn would be best as a lot of the faculty in my field is there plus the coursework and language requirements would greatly help in writing the dissertation. 
Thanks to everyone who helped!
 

Decided on Penn!
I spoke to my prospective supervisor at length and figured Penn would be best as a lot of the faculty in my field is there plus the coursework and language requirements would greatly help in writing the dissertation. 
Thanks to everyone who helped!
 

Received an acceptance from Cambridge this morning! Very excited! 

It's difficult to give any super useful/accurate tax advice because it's dependent on the country that you come from, the US state you live in, etc etc, but I can tell you my situation in NY, which is that my taxes are deducted from my stipend every pay round and I can claim back some expenses but ultimately not a lot, so my stipend (in terms of what I actually take home) is less than the stipend most of my colleagues receive but still completely liveable. I can't remember details, exactly, but when I was choosing between UPenn and NYU last year I know that the tax situation was somewhat better at UPenn. As an international student you should be able to live very comfortably on the UPenn stipend especially given prices in West Philly, or wherever you choose to live in Philly, are very reasonable (in my opinion). Re UPenn v Cambridge, it depends on your field but Penn's the better choice for the US job market--I'd also say that just being connected to the network of schools on the east coast is really valuable. I'm happy to talk more about international student stuff etc via PM

Nice! The medicine side of the department has been considerably strengthened in recent years. 
About the interview, don't be too stressed. It's generally a very informal chat about your research interests. Good luck! 

Admitted to Penn HSS! Super excited to attend but also waiting on news from another university to make the final decision.

This hits so close. I have been told by three out of five schools I applied to that I was on their "shortlist". Waitlisted for my top choice. No clue about how long the list is, where I stand, how many people they accepted etc etc. 

Those are all great schools, congratulations! I agree with @pssteinit really depends on the training and theory you want to be reading. 
I made the switch from History to History of Science for my field after I took several seminars in the HoS department in my field and found it more suitable for my needs. My supervisor on the other hand trained in HoS field but ended up wanting to teach in the history department in general cause he felt his work fit well within those approaches. Plus there were also several people in my cohort who were doing history of science research within the history department and were comfortable with that. I am not sure how the choice of department might affect job market prospects. Although i would say it's also important that you find out what kind of relationship  the HoS has with the history faculty more broadly. I am not sure about Harvard so much but Uchicago's history of science program for example works very closely with the general history department. It's also important that you go through the kind of course work requirements that will be needed of you. I know someone who now regrets choosing the HoS program instead of the general history one as they wanted to train in a specific geographic area but the initial years needed them to take courses only within the HoS and now they feel quite stuck. 
Hope this helps!

I'm already attending, but broadly speaking, my interests are in late medieval/early modern astronomy/chymistry (yet to see where the latter is going!).
Last year, I applied to Indiana HPS, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Wisconsin, Yale, Minnesota, Hopkins, and Chicago. I shouldn't have applied to Yale, Princeton, Harvard, or Chicago given my interests at the time (much more focused on Jesuit science and the like). I was accepted to Minnesota and Wisconsin for the full MA/PhD, Chicago gave me the MAPPS, and Indiana an unfunded MA.
In terms of the best programs, it depends specifically what you want to do. Hopkins HoS and HoM are phenomenal for early modern and late medieval. Principe and Portuondo are really great people. Harvard is strong in later periods, but is rebuilding its early modern, as they've had to replace Katie Park and Mario Biagioli. Princeton is obviously very strong, though Tony Grafton has stopped taking grad students.
With regard to Wisconsin, I'm of two minds about this program. Obviously I go there, so I have my own biases. I think that if you want to do something closer to STS, you ought to go somewhere like Cornell or Penn. Nicole Nelson is excellent, but she's the only formal STS scholar. The Medical History dept. here is very focused on 19th/20th century, so it's tough to do anything earlier. Lynn Nyhart remains one of the best historians of biology, and Pablo Gomez is great if you want to do Atlantic history of medicine/science. If you want to talk about Wisconsin further, PM me.
Indiana's HPS is a good program, but has bad internal issues. Bill Newman and Domenico Meli are top scholars on the history side, but philosophy runs the department. Minnesota has funding issues because it's somewhat placeless.
I can't say anything substantive about Pitt, Berkeley, ND, UCLA, Stanford, or Oklahoma. @Neist knows way more about OU than I would.

That's a decision you have to make for yourself. I'll say that most HoS programs today require you to interact with the history department more generally. The differences really come in the kinds of theory and approaches you're exposed to. For example, most history departments aren't going to have you read Kuhn/Latour/Woolgar/Hacking, whereas most HoS departments will.
Harvard HoS is an excellent program. It really depends on what you want to focus on. If you want to focus on history of Mexican medicine, then Harvard is the choice. If you want to focus on history of Mexico with an eye on medicine/healing, then you're better off in history. I hope that makes sense. My department has an Africanist who writes about medicine/healing, but he's fundamentally an Africanist, not a historian of medicine. Also, keep in mind that the two will often have different thematic approaches.
 

Ok I also received news I was accepted to UCSD History + Science Studies today, I never thought I would have an actual decision to make. Now just waiting on Chicago CHSS. Good luck to everyone, hopefully we'll all get good news this week!

Waitlisted for Harvard HoS. Starting to feel like I am missing the shot everywhere by a very slim margin. 

Patience.   Before you know it February will be over and we will all know what the immediate future holds.

Got an acceptance email from Northern Illinois University's DGS at about 10 am this morning (it broke the streak of all my previous decisions coming in late at night). Excited at the prospect of possibly working with Vera Lind. Her emphases on social/cultural history, marginalized people, gender, and religious history in early modern Germany are so perfectly aligned with mine!

I’ve heard back from one school and it was an acceptance, so i am happy about that.  My POI worked hard for me.  I would love to check the others off just to move on.  At this point, if I was a top choice I would have heard something so i am not feelng confident.  I don’t take it personal because I can really see how it works s a question of fit and politics.  

Went to check results and saw this. Thought you all would get a kick out of it. 

UCSB is sending out some (unofficial) admission(s), in case anyone is interested. One funding package possibility is something like: stipend (approximately 20 k) + tuition/fees and health insurance) for the 1st year, and TA stipend + tuition/fees and health insurance for 2nd to 4th year.
And I if I may humbly offer something else here, this is my second application cycle. After my first cycle ended abruptly in mid February (=I was not even wait-listed) 2017, I expressed myself in the Fall 2017 Applicants thread, and in response, this forum offered comforting words and more importantly, advice on what could be my alternative options/what I could do better. It was based on the (rather personal and very detailed) advice after my first cycle ended that I was able to build a new and stronger application package for this cycle. So far I am offered unofficial admission at UChicago (full funding) and UCSB. Of course, I only experienced two cycles so I am no expert here, but I think for many applicants, the end of your first and unsuccessful cycle is not necessarily the moment when you got your last rejection notification or, fortunately and unfortunately, the end of your Application Cycle. 
Just my two cents and some very general thoughts - the more specific version would  be offered under the lessons learned thread, so please don't take them personal. 

Got a phone call this morning from the prof I've been talking to about my app. It wasn't bad. it was one of those "it's not you, it's us" calls. They just don't have a Dutch person right now and they wouldn't want me to switch my focus. I told them about wanting to look at the Dutch in the Mediterranean, which it seems will be a much better approach for next cycle. I am going to the consortium meeting on the 21st to listen to a talk on poetry in the EM Med. I am going to take a break from looking at anything to do with apps and then spend part of the summer redoing all of it.
I was told that they were impressed with the original translations in the writing sample and asked if I had more translations or if i had only done them for that paper. I'm 250 pages into translating a 750 page travel memoir. Soooo, was told to use a spot in the extra materials section to put about 10 pages of translation next time- there is no one there that does Dutch language, so showing I can do that on my own helps. Oh, and add a translation of EM Italian because no one there does Italian. They are VERY heavy on the French side for EM except for one and they do Central Europe.
I feel a lot better today and thought some of you may find that translation information to be helpful in the future.

I got my MA from Columbia and am pretty close with several of the Medievalists in the department (I didn't apply for PhD there because they have a policy against taking people with MAs from the department which is pretty annoying). I can't speak for the other specialities, but the Medievalists have just started the looking at applications, so I wouldn't expect to hear back until at least mid February. Hope that helps!