I’m a history grad student who should have finished his PhD already, but who is an awful procrastinator. My partner finished her history PhD in the Spring, and now has a tenure track position in the Cal State system. I’ll second pretty much everything Fretful Porpentine said about academia and the job market, because it all applies in spades to history right now.
I have a question about the schools you’re applying to. Have you chosen those schools because they are strong in the area you want to study? Are there particular professors there with whom you are interested in working? Because these are very important things to consider, both for the application process itself, and for your future in academia.
For the application, i really think it helps if you can demonstrate a familiarity with the work of some of the faculty members, and make clear who you would like to work with, and why. I’m sure already know this, but your application needs to do more than tell them how much you love history, and if it contains some indication that you are aware of your mid- to long-term intellectual and professional goals, then that’s all the better.
Who you work with can also be important to your job prospects, because letters of recommendation are a big factor on the job market, especially in the initial weeding-out process when the search committee is trying to whittle down 200 applications to a dozen or so. If you have good recommendations from people who are recognized in their field, it really helps.
Many of the really plum positions at the good research schools get filled by graduates from other top research schools, and while the candidates from these schools are often top notch, the fact is that they are also helped greatly by the fact that their recommendation letters are written by people whose names everyone in the history profession knows.
The fact is that, all other things being equal, your chances of getting a job are better if you went to a top-tier school and had a well-regarded set of advisers. I’m at Johns Hopkins, and that’s where my partner got her PhD. Her letters of recommendation were written by professors whose names would be known to anyone studying women’s history in the United States, and possibly the world. These are professors who have written prize-winning books, and whose works are among the first cited in any bibliography on their subject areas. Good letters from people like that are worth their weight in gold. The value of going to a top-tier school is shown by the fact that basically every Hopkins PhD i know has a pretty good job, and quite a few are in top-tier research schools.
On a more general note, i think it really helps to have an adviser who you get along with and, more importantly, who gives you timely and valuable feedback on your work. You don’t want someone who is going to take three months to turn around a 50-page chapter, and you also don’t want someone who just hands back your work and says, “Yeah, this is fine.” You also, however, don’t want someone who insists that you follow their every dictate, and who effectively tells you what to put in your dissertation. What you want is someone who reads your work with a critical eye, who offers good advice, but who also does not expect you to be a mere clone of your adviser. I think it’s good that you’re attempting to get in contact with potential advisers now, because i know people who have been accepted into PhD programs and then find out that their professor of choice is not really interested in working with them.