sciencehistorian

I can't think of a single POI who has ever indicated that they want an applicant to have a determined topic already selected.
You should be able to articulate questions you're interested in, yes, as well as things like time period and approach. And you should be able to speak about projects you *could* imagine doing at an institution. But from the conversations I've had, professors seem to recoil at the idea that applicants have a prefigured sense of what exact singular thing they'd like to study in the PhD, for at least two reasons — 1) if the applicant already has everything figured out, why do they need to obtain the PhD? and 2) the majority of students will change and mature their interests over the course of the pre-quals years; some programs even almost have an expectation for their students' interests to change between application and the dissertation prospectus. Recognition of this latter fact is itself, I imagine, one of those more subtle indicators that an applicant has a realistic understanding of what graduate school is like, and is not entering without false impressions.

I can't think of a single POI who has ever indicated that they want an applicant to have a determined topic already selected.
You should be able to articulate questions you're interested in, yes, as well as things like time period and approach. And you should be able to speak about projects you *could* imagine doing at an institution. But from the conversations I've had, professors seem to recoil at the idea that applicants have a prefigured sense of what exact singular thing they'd like to study in the PhD, for at least two reasons — 1) if the applicant already has everything figured out, why do they need to obtain the PhD? and 2) the majority of students will change and mature their interests over the course of the pre-quals years; some programs even almost have an expectation for their students' interests to change between application and the dissertation prospectus. Recognition of this latter fact is itself, I imagine, one of those more subtle indicators that an applicant has a realistic understanding of what graduate school is like, and is not entering without false impressions.

I can't think of a single POI who has ever indicated that they want an applicant to have a determined topic already selected.
You should be able to articulate questions you're interested in, yes, as well as things like time period and approach. And you should be able to speak about projects you *could* imagine doing at an institution. But from the conversations I've had, professors seem to recoil at the idea that applicants have a prefigured sense of what exact singular thing they'd like to study in the PhD, for at least two reasons — 1) if the applicant already has everything figured out, why do they need to obtain the PhD? and 2) the majority of students will change and mature their interests over the course of the pre-quals years; some programs even almost have an expectation for their students' interests to change between application and the dissertation prospectus. Recognition of this latter fact is itself, I imagine, one of those more subtle indicators that an applicant has a realistic understanding of what graduate school is like, and is not entering without false impressions.

I hope you hear back favorably for that one!

What level of detail would you all suggest should be included on a CV?
My minimal-detail CV currently includes:
Education (Institution, degrees, and date). Research Experiences (Affiliation, position, and date). Publications and Scholarship (Citations). Conference Presentations (Name(s), title, venue, format). Awards and Funding (Title, source, amount, and date). Extracurricular Activities (Group, positions, date). Service (Role, event/group, date). Teaching Experience (Group, position, date). This puts me at slightly over 2 pages, and seems commensurate with the level of detail CVs normally contain at the faculty level.
According to my perusal of the forums, some people suggest including resume-esque information that contains more specific details on the activities and tasks completed during certain experiences.
I could add more detail to the research, extracurricular, and teaching sections, although for the extracurricular section I'd likely restrict detail-addition to the roles with skills relevant for a graduate student. I would estimate that addition of such details would be push me to 3 or 3.5 pages. Would such information be helpful to an admissions committee or be viewed as extraneous?
 

There are others who can give you more helpful information, but I've found Berkeley's website to be particularly helpful in spelling out the general profile of a PhD applicant in history. My understanding is that a standalone master's is particularly helpful if you lack any of these components, like an academic background in history, or research interests sufficiently focused such that you can clearly articulate your time period, location, methodology, and topic of interest, as well as the broader historiographical inquiries driving your future work. 

Thanks for the advice, @AP.
 
So... it's August now. It seems like this forum is a lot less active than it was in previous years, but there's still plenty of time until the cycle picks up. How is application writing going for everyone?
On my end, I had the pleasure of talking to a POI a little bit ago who gave me some much-needed advice on narrowing my research interests. I suspect I'm going to need to continue revising that heavily over the next few weeks at least, if not longer. I think my personal statement is in better shape. I have a ~25-page writing sample in mind (the introduction and part of a chapter of my thesis), but that needs revision, too.

What level of detail would you all suggest should be included on a CV?
My minimal-detail CV currently includes:
Education (Institution, degrees, and date). Research Experiences (Affiliation, position, and date). Publications and Scholarship (Citations). Conference Presentations (Name(s), title, venue, format). Awards and Funding (Title, source, amount, and date). Extracurricular Activities (Group, positions, date). Service (Role, event/group, date). Teaching Experience (Group, position, date). This puts me at slightly over 2 pages, and seems commensurate with the level of detail CVs normally contain at the faculty level.
According to my perusal of the forums, some people suggest including resume-esque information that contains more specific details on the activities and tasks completed during certain experiences.
I could add more detail to the research, extracurricular, and teaching sections, although for the extracurricular section I'd likely restrict detail-addition to the roles with skills relevant for a graduate student. I would estimate that addition of such details would be push me to 3 or 3.5 pages. Would such information be helpful to an admissions committee or be viewed as extraneous?
 

This looks pretty academic-ly to me. Always, ALWAYS put the most relevant pieces of information first. Hence, I'd put teaching experience before service or extracurricular. "Publications & Scholarship" sounds redundant. Either "publications" or "scholarly work." 
The only portion you might to add some resume-style detail is for research experience, if this experience was not the norm or if it includes very different experiences. For instance, maybe you were an RA for a professor and that meant scanning books, maybe for another prof you went into the archive. 

@sciencehistorian, I know I'm late to the game, but in general, you want to avoid history of science/medicine programs that aren't well connected to their larger history programs. The overwhelming majority of academic historians of science/medicine will teach something like 20th century US, with history of medicine on the side.

Ditto.
I do think that it certainly makes your research more interesting if you eventually include historians of other regions in your committee, but for application purposes, given the number of historians of medicine in North America, you should definitely apply to a place where there is one. 

For a big field like modern US, I would advise against it -- not for any intellectual reasons, but because you'll be lacking a connection to a scholar in this sub-field (US medicine) with more active professional networks.

I don't know of anyone who has gotten the GRFP, but I do know several people in my program have picked up dissertation research awards from the NSF under their Science and Technology Studies division.
My very rudimentary impression is that any NSF-funded project has to shed light on a scientific discipline, or if you do history of medicine, medical science. I know I looked into applying for some NSF money once, but it wasn't a great fit, even though I study health care— my project was/is more focused on things like hospital operations and staffing shortages, not how patients responded to medical treatments, how medical technologies were developed/used in hospital contexts, the social history of medical disciplines like cardiology, psychiatry, obstetrics, etc.
I'd recommend searching through the NSF website to see what kinds of projects have been funded, too.

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/

There is a reddit thread compiling programs that are not accepting applicants that many of you will find useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gradadmissions/comments/iekjt5/updated_list_of_programs_not_accepting_applicants/