brokenrefreshbutton

I did reach out but I wonder how much effect that has on my chances of being admitted. Obviously I hope it has a lot but I imagine a lot of waitlisted people ask professors (at a steady pace lest they come across as annoying) or hint that they are still interested with silly questions they don't really need to ask in the first place. 
Do all waitlists have a ranking system? I wonder if it's too forward to ask where I am on that ranking....

No luck on my end getting off any waitlists just yet (though I'm NES (Cornell)/NELC (Yale), I imagine many applicants here also applied to programs in Near Eastern Studies). I imagine most people have heard back from their programs by now and have maybe even checked out potential universities; I wonder, then, what the average date is by when they accept/decline and help us waitlisters move up a rung or two on this most slippery of ladders!

Congrats on Brown!
I have heard that students who apply to PhD programs from undergrad in fields like Physics tend to get accepted at a much higher rate than for something like Islamic Studies (though it varies in the humanities). But of course, it's not unheard of. I think rec letters, quality of a writing sample, and overall maturity are better attested for students coming from an MA program. 
I have also heard that an MA from Chicago (CMES), Austin, and NYU have pretty good placement rates for students who apply to PhD programs after. (this is just based on a survey I myself did)