159: How to Create an Effective CV for Grad Admissions

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Welcome back everyone to the Grad School Femtoring podcast. This is your host, Dra. Yvette. Today, I have an episode all about how to write a CV for grad school. I am coming up on three years of recording this podcast, and I am completely surprised that I have not recorded an episode on the CV, the Curriculum Vita.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

I have so many episodes that discuss the topic of applying to graduate school, and actually teach you how to draft the different components of your grad school application. Somehow, I missed the CV. Even though it's long overdue, I thought I might as well record it now and not have you wait any longer. For today's episode, I'm really going to be focusing on how to draft the CV for the purpose of applying to graduate school. But some of the information I share may be relevant for those of you that are already in graduate school, that are looking to update, modify, strengthen your current CV.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Let's get started with: what is a curriculum vita? This is a document meant to summarize your academic achievements. A lot of times it's compared to a resume. However, it is not the same thing as a resume. A CV tends to be longer. It's a document that showcases your full academic experience, accomplishments, skills. The resume tends to be shorter, more succinct, and often tailored to very specific job applications. The CV, however, doesn't have a page limit. Believe it or not some professors that you may have had or that you currently have may have CV's that are twenty, thirty, forty- I've even seen fifty page CV's for folks who are faculty who are either retiring, or they're already retired- they're emeriti faculty. They have a long standing career, and it shows in their very long CV.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So how do you draft the CV? Odds are you probably already have experience writing a resume, because a lot of us have had some sort of job experience where that was required. But this may be your first time having to draft a CV if you haven't had any other opportunity where it's been required. Typically, the CV for graduate school is not too long. It may be two pages, three pages long. And the first thing that you have on your CV- at the top of your CV- is your name and your contact information. That always comes first. Some other sections may be interchangeable. Some of the heading titles, you can modify them as you see fit. But what remains the same across the board is that your name and your contact info always goes at the top.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Below the contact information, another thing that you must have is your education section. In that education section, that's where you're listing your degrees, the institutions that you attended, and the departments in which you received your degrees. For most applicants, you're including community colleges. You're including your Bachelor's degree and the date you expect to complete it. And in some cases, for students who maybe studied abroad or who have had experiences at other universities outside of their current university, it is optional to include that in your education section as well.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Following the education section, what are some other very commonly used sections? Let's take a look. You can include an honors and awards, or grants and fellowships section. You can include research experience and research presentations, publications, teaching experience. You can include skills. You can include volunteer or leadership experience. You can include memberships of your part of any national association in your field. And most CVS's will have a references section at the end.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now, let me talk a little bit more detail about what goes in some of these frequently used headings and sections. One of the very important sections that you want to have when you're applying to grad school is your research experience section, bhis is where you're showcasing and listing the things that you probably are also discussing in your Statement of Purpose. This is where you discuss what opportunities you've had- and specifically naming dates of the experiences, your title or role, and the name of the opportunity or program that you participated in. You can also include a brief description- in bullet form- of what you studied, and the tangible outcome of that research. Research experience is very, very important. Even if you did not do a formal program, you'll want to make sure to include research experience in the form of a paper that you wrote, if you took a research methods course, or any other type of experience that you had. You'll want to list it in that section.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Aside from research experience, another section that's related to that is the research presentation section. Just because you have research experience doesn't necessarily indicate that you have presenting experience. That's why it's important to indicate that - even if it's the same project for the same program, if you presented at a conference, if you presented at a symposium, if you presented at a colloquium, you want to indicate that and include the title of your presentation. You want to include the location in which you presented, the conference name, if it was for a conference, and the date that you gave that presentation.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another section that is great to have- although it's not expected if you're applying to grad school, but if you have it is definitely a plus- is a publication section. Sometimes individuals do manage to get publications out of undergraduate research journals. if that's the case for you, great. You can include that in your publication section. It's going to make you stand out. But if you don't, don't worry too much, because it is not expected at this stage for you to have any or a lot of publication experience.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Next after publication- so the publications, the location of that section varies. Some people choose to include publications right under their education, and on top of research experience and research presentations. Because research is so heavily prioritized in graduate programs, that goes at the top. But other individuals may include it after the research experience and presentation section. It really is up to you.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Next is awards, honors and awards, grants and fellowships. There's some flexibility in terms of what you want to call that section. It depends on what types of opportunities you've had it. Have you received scholarships and fellowships, or have you had more opportunities for getting grants- travel grants, anything like that. Depending on what you have to showcase, then you'll want to call it honors and awards, or grants and fellowships, and include the amount of the award. You want to include the name of the award, and the amount, and the year that you received those awards.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Next up are some extra sections that you, again, may or may not have. These sections are teaching experience, leadership experience, service work, volunteer experience- up to you whatever you have, and whatever you want to showcase. No matter what, just make sure that the that you showcase experiences that are aligned with the graduate program that you're applying to. If you have certain work experience that maybe doesn't have anything to do with your academic endeavors and goals, then you don't necessarily have to keep it there.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another thing I don't recommend is including anything from high school. Sometimes this happens if you get this very well known prestigious scholarship or honor or whatever it is in high school. That's great for your college applications, but it's not so great for your grad school app. So withhold any information from high school, and also withhold any type of experiences that are not directly related. For example, when I was in high school and in college, I had certain work experiences outside of college that weren't necessarily something I wanted to highlight. Maybe that was working for retail, or maybe it was working in the food industry. It wasn't directly tying in to my pursuit of a theater and performance studies PhD, so I left that out.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

All right. With a teaching experience section, please note that you can include things like tutoring opportunities. You can also include any times that maybe you served as a teaching assistant. Sometimes undergraduates do get that opportunity. Feel free to include that there. Leadership experience and service work- it's up to you what you want to call it. That's where, if you've been involved in any extracurriculars- and actively involved, actually heavily involved, and you want to showcase that. You can definitely include that there. Service work too. Sometimes you're involved in service work in the form of extracurriculars or part time jobs. You can include that if you'd like.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Other sections that are common are a skills section, a languages section, a membership section- like I mentioned earlier- or you can also call it professional memberships, and a references section. For the skills, I recommend including relevant academic and research skills. Sometimes folks are tempted to say things like, I have experience with Microsoft Word or Microsoft Office. But this is almost an expectation or a norm across the board, no matter what field you're in. So I would hold back on including things like that. Instead, I would include discipline specific skills that you've gained, research skills that you've gained. If you've learned how to use of software, if you've learned a technical skill, include that there. If you don't have that, that's okay. You don't need that section.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Similarly, for languages, I've seen a lot of folks include that they know one language and then they'll also include English as a language. Please don't include English within your languages section. It is assumed that because your educational background has been in institutions of education that are in the US and predominantly in English, we know that you know English. We know that you speak, you know how to read, write, and all of that in English. So don't include English, but do include any other languages. If you know Spanish, if you know Portuguese, Japanese, German, you name it.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Whatever language you know, make sure to include it, especially if it's relevant in your field. Some disciplines greatly appreciate and actually will count that towards part of your requirement in graduate school. I know especially in the humanities, disciplines like Comparative Literature, certain language disciplines, will ask that you have at least a second language, sometimes even a third language. Make sure you include also your proficiency level in that language. Not just saying I'm proficient, but say whether it's in writing, reading, speaking, and even translating and interpreting.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

What's next? After languages, after skills, languages, the last section that I recommend everybody have is the references section. This is where you can include anywhere from two, up to even six people, whose names, titles and contact information you want to share. Make sure that if you do include names of individuals, that you reach out to them and ask them if they can be your reference. It is unfortunately, not great to include people as a reference and then have them get- this doesn't happen often. But if they were to get a phone call or an email from a potential graduate school because they were mentioned as a reference, and you didn't ask them- that's gonna make you look bad.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

So make sure you always ask in advance if they can serve as a reference, and if you can add them as a reference on your CV. If you have not yet asked and you're still turning in a CV, you can always include a references section and then simply write one line saying, available upon request. That's okay too. So then if they ask you for your references, then you know- this is the time for me to ask my recommenders, or the other people who you want to be your reference for your grad school apps,. You can ask them right then and there if you can add them to your CV.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

That's it in terms of the common sections. There's so much information online if you wanted to learn about other potential sections that you can include in your CV. But the ones I mentioned are the ones that I most frequently see when I'm helping people. In over ten years that I've been helping people, these are the main sections that come up over and over and over again. You don't have to have all of them, but just showcase your experience in a way that makes you look good, and where everything that you share is in alignment with why you are applying to that program.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now, a couple of things when it comes to formatting is the CV is supposed to be simple, straightforward. There's no bells and whistles. It's not supposed to be flashy, or colorful, or funky. It's just very- I don't even know how to say it. I guess, straightforward, plain. What I mean by that? I mean that your fonts should all be one color, preferably black. Sometimes, some people choose blue. Dark blue is okay, but Black is what's expected. Times New Roman is the font that most people use. There are other types of serif type, serif fonts, like Georgia. I'm trying to think about any others. That's the only other one that comes to mind right now that are acceptable, that look similar to Times New Roman. But if you want to play it safe, you can use Times New Roman.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Then in terms of the font size, it's recommended across the board- not just within the CV, but also in your essays- for you to keep it to between size 11 and 12. It could be 11, 11.5, 12. Anything over 12 is too big. Anything under 12 is too small and hard to read. The only exception is your name. Your name at the very top of the CV can be bigger. You can make it as big as 14, or even 16 if you really want it to stand out. Not too too big then, because that might just look silly. So that's the font size.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Now also, another thing to consider are the margins. I know folks will mess around with margins many times when they have certain page limits. Typically for the CV, you will not get a page limit the way that you would for a statement of purpose or a personal statement. But if you do have a page limit, you want to stick to that. If they say no more than a two, three page CV, you want to stick to that. And try to honor the one inch margin. Most of the time, most things, they want you to stick to a one inch margin. Don't mess with them.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Another thing you can do- which is not required, but it's one of my preferences, and a lot of folks have this preference as well- is to left justify your information and share any dates on the left hand side. Typically, for folks who write resumes, it's really common to see the dates of all of your opportunities listed on the far right side. But for CVS- and just in general, because the way that we read is we read- it's a very Western way. We read from left to right. Folks are usually, when they're reviewing applications, they're trying to scan through information really quickly. They want to get to see the dates right away. To help them, to guide their eyes, it's better to keep your dates on the left hand side. So I recommend left justifying information, and keeping your dates on the left hand side.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Let me see. Is there anything else that I want to include about the CV for you not to forget? I think I've covered almost everything. Frequently asked questions usually is like how much is too short? I don't think there is such a thing as a CV that is too short, because you're not expected to have a ton of experience at this point in time. But I think it's common to have a two to three page CV at this time.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

Sometimes, CV's can get too long among applicants. I'll notice people starting to pad information, so their spacing looks off. They're just adding too much space in between each information, or each line of content in their CV. Or sometimes, the CV looks funny because they've padded the information that they've shared on each entry. Maybe instead of adding two to three bullets to describe an experience, they're adding five, six, seven, eight bullets, or they're adding really long paragraphs. The CV is not a place for long form writing. You do that in your essays, not in the CV.

Dra. Yvette Martinez-Vu

That's it. If you are curious about what CV's looked like- and once again, take a look at any CV's that you see online. But even better, check out some of the departmental websites for the programs you're interested in. See if they have names of any current graduate students or professors, and then download their CV's. A lot of times individuals have their own personal websites, or they have a university based website where they share their CV. And a lot of times it's a downloadable PDF. Start to take a look at what CV's in your discipline look like, and then model yours after the common threads that you see within those CV's. Good luck with working on your CV, if you need to write one. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. That's it for now. Until next time.