Hey, thanks for starting the thread! This is also my second time applying for PhD programs. I applied to a couple of schools last year but wasn't as prepared as I needed to be. I graduated from my undergraduate degree (UK) in December and I am currently working as a research assistant on a few different projects to gain some additional experience before applying again for 2020 entry.
My area of interest is language and cognitive development in early childhood, especially the development of word-learning heuristics and bilingualism. I am still deciding on my full list of universities to apply to, but here are the schools that I am currently interested in:
Stanford University
Cornell University
UC Berkeley
Yale University
Boston University
University of Oxford
University of Edinburgh
I feel like a lot of these are definitely long-shots so I need to add some more realistic options as well!