Dark Paladin

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

FWIW, I think you made the correct decision.

See you in New Haven, then!

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

Congratulations on a very successful application season.
A slightly different question than @psstein's query about an absentee advisor. Do you know if you work better in a hands off or hands on environment?  (Because distance does not automatically entail detachment.)
If you attend Penn, you will have two years to get as much guidance as you can from this professor while also developing relationships with other professors (and would they all have to be at Penn?) who can provide the support you need in case he decides "Hey, I'm retired" after he relocates. (It happens, despite the best intentions.)
 

I would find this very, very off-putting--I was in a similar position w Penn a few years ago. My prospective advisor seemed amazing but she was also very near retirement and I couldn't imagine who would become my primary advisor if she were suddenly unable to advise me. I would highly stress the importance of a supportive team over a supportive individual (and I wouldn't put too much emphasis on big names, though this person also sounds like they have a record as a good advisor, so that's a bit different). To me, a stranger reading your post, it sounds like you'd be more secure at Yale, and feeling secure in your program is really important. 

More significant than you'd probably hope. He sounds like a great guy and a good advisor. There are two very significant concerns here:
1. Will you be able to get the type of support you need from an absentee advisor? Are there other faculty you can lean on at Penn? Just anecdotally, a friend finished his PhD last May. His advisor had recently retired and was in the middle of doing other things. He said that it was impossible to get in contact with the guy-- it took weeks to get comments on drafts and feedback. Nothing to do with ability, but a lot to do with availability.
2. Do you need a JD? Graduate programs already take an inordinate amount of time (6 years is a floor at most universities). A JD/PhD will only extend that period. I also want to say that a JD is, in a very real sense, a far more useful degree than a PhD. The job market for law is bad. The job market and long-term outlook for academic history is nothing short of miserable.
This is nothing short of an absolutely giant red flag. A lack of a proven track record of success, combined with a nonchalant attitude to the job market should set off a very loud warning klaxon. The market is brutal, even for someone from a top-tier Ivy. As I've said many, many times, the point is not to get into graduate school. It's to find a job after graduate school.

Admitted off of the UVA waitlist with a full fellowship offer. Best of luck to everyone else!

It feels completely surreal to say this, but I have accepted an offer from Northwestern. On my way home in the wee hours of Sunday morning, I said out loud to my partner, "I have fully accepted that in two days I'll get an email from them telling me that there's no space for me this year." Two minutes later, the offer email came in (at 2 AM Chicago time--deadlines don't respect normal sleep schedules). 
Even after everything I've put into this process, I still spent the day yesterday in deep reflection on whether I really, truly want to take this leap. I wanted to be sure that I was accepting their offer because it's the right one, not because it's the only one. Ultimately, this was the best option all along to support the work I want to do.
Best of luck to everyone who's making a decision today, or waiting on one. I still can't quite believe it, but it's real. 

It was the hardest decision I've ever made but I have declined Penn's offer and will be heading to Yale next year. 
I honestly still feel very conflicted, but I am incredibly excited for what is to come. 
Best of luck to everyone else! 

I remember after the Yale acceptances last week you were feeling discouraged. Now you are in at one of the best programs in the country! I'm happy it worked out for you. Congrats! 

Accepted into U-Mich! The wait is finally over!

I WAS JUST ACCEPTED AT YALE!!!! 
Crying with happiness. 

Obviously only you can answer this but I would give yourself some breathing room from the thesis before you definitely change focus. 
I remember feeling the same way sometimes when I was in the later stages of my undergrad thesis (although my thinking never went to such a dramatic shift), only to reaffirm my research interests after a couple months break. 
What's new and exciting today might not always feel that way. Just make sure you are making the shift for the right reasons and not running away from your research for something you'll be just as bored with in the long run. 

I WAS JUST ACCEPTED AT YALE!!!! 
Crying with happiness. 

Congrats to the Yale admits!! That's amazing!! 
Waiting on them for American Studies, likely won't hear for another week or so! And I've also been punked by Harvard with the 503 error. ?

I WAS JUST ACCEPTED AT YALE!!!! 
Crying with happiness. 

YES.  Office staff do have very long memories like professors.  They don't always get treated well by the faculty and graduate students alike (i.e. ignoring them, don't see them as valuable, or worse, abuse them).  Make their day by noticing them and the time they took (even if it's part of their job) to send you an e-mail welcoming you to the program. Especially if one is doing the assigning of TAs to courses, ordering the files for committee review for grants....  and, oh, they do talk to advisers about your behavior. #hardlessonslearned

I WAS JUST ACCEPTED AT YALE!!!! 
Crying with happiness.