L13

I did not propose a model for others to emulate. I said nothing about my application process; what I mentioned were my circumstances at its outset, to illustrate the point that being clueless about the state of the field can change pretty quickly (unlike being ready for grad school, which I consider a different matter). As to the criticism you and others are making, what I tried to say is that if you don’t see enough evidence that someone on the internet deseves your advice, you’re free to disregard their request for it. Preaching about the importance of due diligence is performative, not constructive.

I applied out of undergrad and knew absolutely nothing about the relative strength of/stand-out names at different departments when I started the process, yet I ended up with an amazing advisor at a great department.
Your level of professionalization says little about your academic preparedness or your odds of acceptance and saying things like "if you have to ask, go away" is not helpful. Obviously applicants need to do their own research, but pointing them in the right direction, or even just a direction, when they have zero idea what to look for is not going to jeopardize the fairness of the application process or cause them to be accepted on false pretenses and flunk out or whatever.
OP, I'm not in your field, but I've gotten the impression Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley dominate job placement in the US, with Columbia being the most successful, though your specific subfield and interests should narrow that down considerably.

I applied out of undergrad and knew absolutely nothing about the relative strength of/stand-out names at different departments when I started the process, yet I ended up with an amazing advisor at a great department.
Your level of professionalization says little about your academic preparedness or your odds of acceptance and saying things like "if you have to ask, go away" is not helpful. Obviously applicants need to do their own research, but pointing them in the right direction, or even just a direction, when they have zero idea what to look for is not going to jeopardize the fairness of the application process or cause them to be accepted on false pretenses and flunk out or whatever.
OP, I'm not in your field, but I've gotten the impression Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley dominate job placement in the US, with Columbia being the most successful, though your specific subfield and interests should narrow that down considerably.

I don't think you'll find the most helpful answers to this question on GradCafe. I would try the following:
1. Ask the South Asian history professors whom you know. Presumably they're already aware that you're applying because you have already asked them for advice. A quick "Hi, just wanted to double check my list, what schools would you say were the top in the field for my specific research interests? Oh, great, that's what I thought," would help. Even if you don't want to tell them your plans yet (although you should if you're applying this year), you could say you're just curious.
Ideally you would be having conversations that were much more in depth at this point.
2. This is the blunt force method: go through the top 100 research universities and see where assistant professors and young associate professors in South Asian history got their degrees. Remember that placement is just as much about the advisor; if you're scratching your head as to why a school appears to be punching above its weight, figure out whether that school had a star academic whose name could get students through the door (eg, Ira Berlin at Maryland), or if they have a longstanding institutional investment in a particular sub-field that is widely recognized (eg, MSU for my field). 
3. Figure out where the scholars who publish groundbreaking scholarship teach and got their degrees.

I applied out of undergrad and knew absolutely nothing about the relative strength of/stand-out names at different departments when I started the process, yet I ended up with an amazing advisor at a great department.
Your level of professionalization says little about your academic preparedness or your odds of acceptance and saying things like "if you have to ask, go away" is not helpful. Obviously applicants need to do their own research, but pointing them in the right direction, or even just a direction, when they have zero idea what to look for is not going to jeopardize the fairness of the application process or cause them to be accepted on false pretenses and flunk out or whatever.
OP, I'm not in your field, but I've gotten the impression Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and Berkeley dominate job placement in the US, with Columbia being the most successful, though your specific subfield and interests should narrow that down considerably.

One has to start somewhere. Please keep these types of comments to yourself. 
Also, knowing best researchers/best programs and being ready for a PhD program are not the same thing. You seem to be equating the two. 

Even then, there's been a longstanding interest in, say, lepers at least since Formation of a Persecuting Society. And so I don't think it's so much a misstep as it is the need to understand better how our field structures knowledge. That is, you have your very specific area of interest, but what is the next category up to which your very specific area is a member? And the one above that, until you get to "medieval history" and then "history"? This is a very important process, as it will greatly aid you in crafting the right "level" of question in your statement of purpose, in writing your prospectus and dissertation, and will serve as a touchstone at those points in your graduate career where you feel lost.
For example, I am very specifically interested in the interactions between Cistercian monks and the incipient kingdoms of western Europe in the 12-13th c. For my project, I work within the frameworks provided by postcolonial studies, frontiers studies, religious studies, political history, and the digital humanities.* The next step from there is to say that this means that I'm interested in socio-political intersections, particularly focused on religious institutions, in the high middle ages. It's this latter criterium that I used to seek out professors with whom I would want to work, and who would be interested in working with me. This gave me a list of about 20 people who did work which interested me, from which I used the various programs' placement rates etc., to whittle down to 6.
Happy hunting!
 
* DH is much to young to provide a framework. I'm making it up as I go along. 

This is university-specific, but almost always the university will consider you externally funded for the duration of the award and you won't receive your usual funding package. Your funding for that semester or year will roll over and extend your financial coverage in the program.
At my university, though, it's not uncommon for people with external fellowships that don't cover tuition to get tuition waivers from the university, which is something.

I may have crossed this line, which started this problematic exercise.
@historygeek As you have seen from my earlier post to this one, there are many differing opinions on how to write an SOP and what is necessary content for one. You have put a lot of effort into writing SOPs this early in the process, which is very helpful and will limit the stress later in the process. I, however, highly recommend taking a step back at this moment. Deadlines are not for another 5 months (roughly). Take a couple weeks and get away from the application material before you start making major changes and adjustments. When I edit and proofread, I try to give myself at least 3 days away from my work before I  begin to edit. A small amount of time away refreshes your eyes, but also gives you a moment to critically think about your work.

There's really no template for SOPs. Mine didn't have anything resembling a hook because I thought all the opening source quotes and attempts to personalize one's research that I'd seen in sample SOPs were contrived and too reminiscent of college application essays.
So I submitted a pretty direct and dry description of my interests and ideas. It was well received and got me where I needed to go.
Again, this is a matter of personal preference, not an objective criterion. For what it's worth, @historygeek, I've only skimmed one of your drafts, but it didn't strike me as boring or stylistically deficient in any way.

Plus, even if your POI is genuinely willing to accept you, they may not be able to intercede on your behalf successfully. They're only one of a number of people who need to approve your application, so trying to predict its outcome based on their behaviour is going to yield imperfect results regardless of how easy they are to read.

I was more focused on if I received negative responses. I nixed several universities from my list because POIs told me they weren't accepting students for whatever reason (retirement, had too many students already, pessimism about their students' job prospects, etc). I nixed a POI (not the university itself) because I got a really bad vibe from them--and I don't care what anyone says, I listen to my gut about these things. I added a program I was hesitant about to my final list because of an enthusiastic response from a POI. I was rejected, but I do not regret applying, as I'm sure I'll see that person at conferences down the line.
i think early conversations with POIs are a great way, perhaps the best way, to craft and cull your list of potential programs. You'll by default be more informed about how your work and experience "fit" each program and can marshal the evidence you gathered through contacting POIs in your SOP, making you a more appealing applicant. There are added bennies to doing this work; I cannot tell you how many times profs I spoke to suggested other POIs at their university and beyond, research directions I should explore, secondary literature I should read, resources I should look into, etc etc. So look at these interactions as helping you decide where to apply and as networking opportunities that can potentially inform your work, rather than as a gauge for whether you'll be accepted or not.

I never contacted my advisor prior to applying to the program I'm in. I also got encouraging emails from my POIs at two programs that rejected me.
I wouldn't put too much stock in it.

A lot of good advice has already been given but I thought I'd add my two cents as well...
Regarding your concerns about your thesis: My offer for Oxford was based on either my final GPA or the final grade received on my thesis/capstone. I also ended up using a section of my thesis for my writing sample, but as others have mentioned using any well-written paper that demonstrates your ability to think critically, use primary sources, and etc, should be fine.
Advice for your personal statement, particularly if you're going for the MSt over the MPhil - the personal statement for the MSt application is sort of different from other (at least American) personal statement prompts. First off, since the MSt application doesn't require a formal research proposal, the statement is where you do lightly propose what you want to work on while you're there. On top of this, Oxford doesn't want a personal statement that is rather self-congratulatory. They want to know why you want to continue your studies there, and what you want to do with your degree once you've finished. I sort of struggled with this especially after since the professors helping me recommended I spent more time in my statement talking about the great things I had done, even though I think the application guide pretty much explicitly says not to do that. As from the application guide: "It should focus on how you see the course as building upon your previous study, and what you hope to do with the qualifications you gain from the University, rather than on personal achievements and aspirations."
As for your research interests - as others have said, keep your mind open as of now and don't let it narrow your search for schools. I know you're about halfway through undergrad, but in my own experience my interests really developed/shifted from the end of my second year to the end of undergrad. Like what L13 said, its always good to take classes that maybe aren't in the field you want to study, as it can help build your base, draw similarities, or carry over ways of thinking/approaching topics. You never know what you may learn, or how a class may influence or change the way to look at things. 
Also for languages - while there is no requirement for the MSt, you will certainly need a language or two for any doctoral program you pursue (as others have said). While you won't need them **now** , it can never hurt to start working on them in the meantime so you're ready for when you do need demonstrate your knowledge them. 

Hi MotherofallCorgis.  I will be attending Cambridge this Fall for my mphil in history of medicine. I completed my undergraduate degree in the US.  I really think L13 did a brilliant job answering your questions so I don’t have much to add beyond echoing the importance of research experience.  The majority of my interview consisted of my advisor asking questions about my research background and writing sample (my senior thesis). Because of the GPA cut off for my program (3.70 at Cambridge and 3.75 at Oxford I think) everyone who applies has good grades.  Research and LORs are consequently very, very important.  I decided not to apply to Oxford because I was not able to find potential advisors working in a similar area to me.  

These two posts worry me a bit. If you want to do an MA, then you should be fine to go ahead and apply to Oxford or Cambridge. However, a Ph.D. at both institutions without at least one foreign language is unacceptable. In your time period and topic, you could use French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, etc. as possible second and third languages. The 'global' turn requires scholars to branch their language skills outside of the norms in order to ask unique and new questions. In your specific case, British Imperial History was dominated by men who only spoke English for decades (could still be argued today) which caused the historiography to be fairly biased and reinforced a lot of colonial attitudes. In order to mediate and alleviate these caveats, I suggest working on your French starting tomorrow and looking into either an Asian or African language. You could also, in theory, pick up Spanish, but I think a 'non-Western' language will be more beneficial and nuanced for your field.

I played with the idea of doing modern British history for a while, and from what I saw on British university sites, another language was a must. I think German and French were the recommended ones. In general, modern European history seems to recommend French and German, unless you're focusing on a different country. 
Just from experience, I would give yourself room to explore. I had about 100 different specialities before I realized where my passions were. It also took different classes, internships, and personal study. Don't limit yourself so soon, imo. 

No problem!
IDK about RAing, sorry. I don't think ECs and credentials are that important compared to your own words and your letters of recommendation, but maybe they count for more than I know.
It's good that you don't actually need a foreign language (yet), but the more languages you know in history, the better. People in this field will take you more seriously the more languages you can read, rightly or wrongly (I think rightly, personally), so IF you can fit it into your schedule, do work on your classical languages/French. You never know when you might need them. But don't prioritize this/stress over it.
I submitted more or less the same application to both universities. At the time, I thought I knew what I wanted to do very well and didn't want to hedge my bets by applying to different programs.
Re. specialization, different people can have vastly different takes on this, but I think it's good when you're a research professional and bad when you're a student. My undergrad history department had breadth requirements that forced me to take classes in different subfields and I regard it as one of the most beneficial features of my undergraduate education. If you get tunnel vision too early, you'll only get exposed to methodologies and theorists your favourite professors think are important--scholars tend to have personal mini-canons and I think you need exposure to as many of them as possible in order to develop as a historian--you won't know what's in and what's considered passé by the field as a whole, you may have a harder time adjusting to new trends and ideas, you'll miss out on valuable interdisciplinary work, etc. etc. etc. These are generalizations, but many historians believe in them and I do too.
When I told my advisor I had been reading recent issues of the top journal in our subfield in search of inspiration for my dissertation, she told me to stop doing that and start reading the AHR. Well, first she said I shouldn't be reading any journals at all and should let my topic appear to me in a dream (paraphrasing...), but then she said you keep up with the field by reading a generalist journal.
Again, other historians may disagree here, but basically, my position is that learning about many things is better than learning about one thing when you're still building a knowledge base.

Yes, of course checking to make sure there's an advisor likely to take you is important, but your interests should be driving the school search process, not the other way around.
By purpose and fit I mean a clear and specific research proposal or at the very least specific examples of skills you're hoping to acquire as a student and classes/resources you'd make use of. In my experience, UK universities expect you to have a slightly more concrete idea of what you want to do than US schools, but this is a generalization and I may be wrong about it. Re. fit, demonstrate you're familiar with the course requirements and opportunities and would be well positioned to make use of them.
At the master's level, advisor fit, as in the overlap between your interests and your advisor's, is less important. As long as you occupy the same broad category, e.g. cultural history of the early Middle Ages or women's history in early modern France, your prospective advisor should be okay with taking you on. In fact, at Cambridge you're not required to request an advisor and may not get your desired advisor if you do, which is one more argument against picking an advisor before you've picked your research interests. (I don't remember right now if that's how it works at Oxford too.)
Not sure what the distinction between 'original research' and 'using primary sources well' is. You want to do both. How do you use primary sources well without doing ingenious things with them, which is what original research is? (You could be editing unedited sources that you discovered in an archive, I suppose... Are you doing that?) If by original research you mean off-the-wall speculation without a strong empirical grounding, though, avoid that. Demonstrating facility with primary sources and languages should be the primary goal of the writing sample IMO.
I'm just saying these master's programs are not as selective as PhD programs in the US. (I see now that Oxford has recently merged most master's degrees in history into one program, though, and don't know what that will mean for course selectivity going forward.) The MSt in global history at Oxford is a slight exception, and the MPhil in intellectual history at Cambridge may be one too, IDK, but even a 20% acceptance rate is not that bad. Again, funding allocation is where the majority of admitted students are 'culled,' in the sense that even if they can afford to attend, they will have lost out on funding to other students; I'm sure the history faculties at Oxbridge don't see this final filter as a good thing and would like to be able to fund all students, but it is what it is.
I assume I demonstrated sufficient research potential through my writing sample and SOP, which outlined the historical questions I'm interested in. I turned down the offer from Cambridge because I couldn't defer enrollment in my PhD program.
Work on your language skills if applicable, take classes that will allow you to produce a 15-20-page piece in which you analyse primary sources, read secondary literature widely and let it guide your interests. Do not specialize too early.

1. For acceptance, no. But you do need a writing sample that shows off your research skills, meaning that you need experience writing research papers, plus if you're hoping to secure funding you'll be competing against a whole new tier of overachievers, some of whom will have prior graduate degrees and serious publications (or, failing that, degrees from Harvard, Princeton, etc., which Oxford and Cambridge love).
2. As with all research, the more you do of it and the more original it is, the better. If you can complete a major research project, do it. If not, find some other way to demonstrate research potential, e.g. by writing a seminar paper.
3. I'm not responsible for admissions at any university, let alone Oxford or Cambridge, but I would imagine your writing sample and research proposal. Pay particular attention to your research proposal when applying to UK institutions and make sure it demonstrates a clear sense of purpose (which is less necessary in US admissions) and fit.
4. UK universities usually specify GPA cutoffs for admission (3.6 for the courses I applied to if I remember correctly). Those are sometimes flexible, but make sure you're as close to meeting them as possible. Beyond that, I doubt your grades matter much.
5. Letting the faculty roster of a particular university shape your interests is a bad idea, yes. There's no guarantee the faculty members you model your work after will even be there when you apply.
Source: I also wanted to get a master's degree in the UK after studying at Oxford as a visiting student in undergrad and researched the application process seriously. I was accepted to master's programmes in history at both Oxford and Cambridge and received funding from Cambridge. However, ultimately I did not matriculate, so my expertise is very limited.
I can tell you this, however. Getting into a master's programme at Oxford or Cambridge is not that hard. Getting money, on the other hand, is a bloodbath.

No problem!
IDK about RAing, sorry. I don't think ECs and credentials are that important compared to your own words and your letters of recommendation, but maybe they count for more than I know.
It's good that you don't actually need a foreign language (yet), but the more languages you know in history, the better. People in this field will take you more seriously the more languages you can read, rightly or wrongly (I think rightly, personally), so IF you can fit it into your schedule, do work on your classical languages/French. You never know when you might need them. But don't prioritize this/stress over it.
I submitted more or less the same application to both universities. At the time, I thought I knew what I wanted to do very well and didn't want to hedge my bets by applying to different programs.
Re. specialization, different people can have vastly different takes on this, but I think it's good when you're a research professional and bad when you're a student. My undergrad history department had breadth requirements that forced me to take classes in different subfields and I regard it as one of the most beneficial features of my undergraduate education. If you get tunnel vision too early, you'll only get exposed to methodologies and theorists your favourite professors think are important--scholars tend to have personal mini-canons and I think you need exposure to as many of them as possible in order to develop as a historian--you won't know what's in and what's considered passé by the field as a whole, you may have a harder time adjusting to new trends and ideas, you'll miss out on valuable interdisciplinary work, etc. etc. etc. These are generalizations, but many historians believe in them and I do too.
When I told my advisor I had been reading recent issues of the top journal in our subfield in search of inspiration for my dissertation, she told me to stop doing that and start reading the AHR. Well, first she said I shouldn't be reading any journals at all and should let my topic appear to me in a dream (paraphrasing...), but then she said you keep up with the field by reading a generalist journal.
Again, other historians may disagree here, but basically, my position is that learning about many things is better than learning about one thing when you're still building a knowledge base.

I think we get a lot of people coming to the forum like this (it's something of my story, too), so let me give two things.
1) GREs don't really matter, but AW matters the least. I myself had a 4.5 and asked a DGS if that would hurt me. His response: "Uh, is that the thing that's out of 6?"
2) I failed out of my undergraduate... twice. My GPA from that experience was 0.86. Here's how I handled it on my writing sample. Notice how it's a pivot, and how it launches aids rather than disrupts the narrative.
"The further I progress in my historical study, the more firmly I hold to the conviction that calling something a `first cause' simply means that one has failed to fully understand the events which preceded it. Still, I can put my finger on the precise moment at which I began to take a professional interest in medieval history. During a survey course on the high and late Middle Ages, I was given a handout with a variety of medieval quotations about women. The second of these read: ``We... recognizing that the wickedness of women is greater than all the other wickedness of the world and that the poison of asps and dragons is more curable and less dangerous to men than the familiarity of women, have unanimously decreed... that we will on no account receive any more sisters... but avoid them like poisonous animals.'' I was struck not only by the misogyny, but also by the practical implications contained within the passage. It painted a portrait of female sexual depravity which was primitive, animalistic, and universal. Yet I knew that the western Church held that every person possessed free will. How did the quote's author reconcile these two seemingly disparate truths to himself or to others? This question became a term paper, the term paper became a senior thesis, and down the rabbit hole I went.
Ten years earlier, if someone asked me what I wanted to be, they would have received an unequivocal answer: an engineer. Throughout high school, I had been an active participant in the school's robotics team, and I had advanced through the standard mathematics curriculum and onto subjects such as linear algebra and multivariate calculus. In 2004, I entered the mechanical engineering program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I quickly received a rather rude awakening. The courses were esoteric, dealing only in abstract concepts and rote memorization, and we were given no opportunity to explore, tinker, or build. I quickly lost interest and direction. My grades declined rapidly, and I was forced to leave the university in 2007. Returning home, I took a job at the local Trader Joe's and went to work putting myself back in order. I used my job to finance a career as an amateur fencer for several years, competing in national and international tournaments, but eventually, the daily grind of customer service took its toll. I was still unsure precisely what I wanted to do in life, but I was sure that, whatever it was, it did not involve shifts that began at five in the morning. I have always had a passing fascination with what I would now call popular medievalisms---Tolkien, the Arthurian legends, and Disney's Robin Hood, to name a few---so when I saw that the Harvard University Extension School, Harvard's night school, was offering a course on medieval warfare and the crusades, I enrolled, thinking it would be a way to rekindle my academic interest. It did. For the first time, I had fun in a college class. The following semester, I enrolled at the Extension School as a degree-seeking student, signed up for the survey course, and received that decisive handout.
The Extension School offered me a second chance at academic success. There, in addition to my history coursework, I was able to improve my Latin and French, finding a new interest in these languages as their utility to my studies became clear. Once I had exhausted the Extension School's medieval course offerings, I applied and was accepted to Harvard's Special Student Program. Through the SSP, I was able to take the regular daytime course offerings at Harvard in subjects such as paleography, German, and historiography. It was through this program that I first took courses with Dr. Beverly Kienzle, Dr. William Stoneman, and Dr. Michael McCormick, all of whom have been my mentors and advisers. Shortly before my graduation in 2013, I presented my undergraduate thesis, advised by Dr. Kienzle, ``Holy Women and Submission to the Divine: Free Will, Gender, and Sanctity in Medieval Europe, ca. 1100--1300,'' to the undergraduate session at the International Congress for Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, MI. I began my master's degree in the History of Christianity at Harvard Divinity School the following fall.
At the Divinity School, I have been able to both refine my academic interests and explore new ground. Through coursework and independent study, I have greatly strengthened my research, linguistic, and paleographic skills. However, my interest in mathematics and computers never entirely went away, leading me to become deeply involved in the digital humanities. I participated in Harvard's first graduate seminar on digital history in which I received hands-on experience in crowd-sourced projects, social network theory, and `popular' history. With Dr. McCormick's encouragement, I first became a research assistant and then the managing editor of his \textit{Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization}, a project which seeks to map archaeological, natural, and social data for the late Roman and Medieval periods. These experiences have not only taught me how to manage cooperative research projects, but also how to incorporate diverse methods and sources of information not frequently utilized in historical study, such as spatial and statistical analysis and climate data, into my research. I have used social network theory to examine the political role of a monastery with few surviving documents, and I am writing a paper on the use of quantitative analysis of style in Latin texts as a means of investigating questions of authorship. Other pieces of my work follow more traditional models: my first publication, a codicological examination of a copy of Eadmer's Vita Anselmi, is currently receiving final revisions. However, the majority of my time has been spent studying a collection of thirteenth-century sermons or collationes preached by the monks of the Cistercian monastery of Foigny, which I am translating for publication. It is through my study of Foigny and its sermons that I first began to be suspicious of monastic claims of stability and isolation, the central topic I will address in my doctoral studies."

Sample A, definitely.
Stuff like prizes and funding is nice, but it doesn't really affect profs' perception of your writing sample. And how closely your sample relates to your proposed topic is not very important, if at all, at least not based on my observations.
Demonstrating facility with primary sources and relevant foreign languages is FAR more impressive, especially if it comes with an original argument. Also, the fact your paper is already the length of a typical writing sample means it is already digestible as a complete piece and you don't have to cut it down from 50-100 pages while retaining the structure and clarity of the original historical argument, which is pretty difficult and time-consuming if you've never done it. Also, frankly, senior theses tend to be unfocused and to lack rhetorical impact and seminar papers are often where the best undergraduate writing is to be found, but obviously YMMV on this. (I say this as someone who wrote a senior thesis and used one of its chapters as a writing sample, so no hate.)

Sample A, definitely.
Stuff like prizes and funding is nice, but it doesn't really affect profs' perception of your writing sample. And how closely your sample relates to your proposed topic is not very important, if at all, at least not based on my observations.
Demonstrating facility with primary sources and relevant foreign languages is FAR more impressive, especially if it comes with an original argument. Also, the fact your paper is already the length of a typical writing sample means it is already digestible as a complete piece and you don't have to cut it down from 50-100 pages while retaining the structure and clarity of the original historical argument, which is pretty difficult and time-consuming if you've never done it. Also, frankly, senior theses tend to be unfocused and to lack rhetorical impact and seminar papers are often where the best undergraduate writing is to be found, but obviously YMMV on this. (I say this as someone who wrote a senior thesis and used one of its chapters as a writing sample, so no hate.)