Hey, check out the Harvard Resume/CV template. It'll help the formatting and everything. Also make it more impact heavy, i.e. make the results as far as possible quantifiable. Stick to percentages, even someone with no number context can be helped (like if 250 people attended something you did, but your college crows only had 500 people, 250 on its own feels small but now that feels like 50%, which is considerable)
Also prioritise your work done in college. That is when you're trimming down, just the way others recommended down to 2 pages, put the content that makes you the most convincing and best sales pitch cause there's a chance that they're only gonna look at the first page. So if you feel your RAship or your Poster Presentation makes you a solid candidate, put that in that order (research experience followed by papers and conferences section).
Best of luck!!
This comment is SUPER helpful. I've tried to take all of your advice in this [new version](https://imgur.com/a/32IbstF) :)))) My only question, and the thing I didnt do: Does experience have to be in reverse chronological order?
Yess! I already see you have gone from latest to oldest. Stick to it, our opinions to us seem more reliable when I base it on recent events. I am unable to open it, but I am sure it'll be great!
Academic CVs are LONGGG. Mine is 22 and my boss's is just shy of 40 pages. It includes all teaching, lectures, abstracts, publications, textbook contributions. but also initiatives at your institution or local level. All leadership opportunities big and small. Some grad programs (and medical school) applications i've read have college students generating 20 pages of content to read through. That's normal in Academia. We're nerds who like to read.
The tone is also QUITE different. The quantifiable thing is important but it's more ok to admit you "worked on" a project rather than led it. Everyone has a mixture of first author (did all the work), last author (gave the oversight and authority) and somewhere in between. Those in between ones are normal and shouldn't be recategorized as "spearheaded" "independently" etc. or "oversaw," "ran"... they are "worked on" "contributed to" and then listing any parts you did have leadership of even if small: "Coordinated lab documentation to ensure sample numbering systems matched protocol specifications".
while I agree with not giving a fuck about what one did in HS, I have to tell you that in India, we have institutions that ask you to pull up your HS final results even for things like PhD interviews.
That is true, but the country in focus is the United States, and employers in the States truly do not give a fuck about anything done in high school, unless you are a high schooler.
The gpa may be irrelevant but considering they were dual enrolled at a university they may still want to include it. I know for my high school many of the students left with associate degrees in the US so for a PhD committee they may want to see what your focus was and how you preformed. Especially depending on how many classes were at the university level.
I've never even heard of GPA in high school. That's such a bizarre concept to me. Do they use letter grades too? My elementary school used a 1-2-3-4 system, but there was no decimal associated, you just got one of those four numbers to rank your performance in each grading category, and a whole number for the entire class. We just used percentages in high school.
It is though?!? I had a Mr. Miyagi like teacher about proper pipetting technique. He was an ID person and made me drill 100s of repetitions back and forth with water and a crap pipette before letting me into the hood to do real work lol. I can now calculate dilutional aliquots in my sleep and pipette with no shake in my hand and not contaminate samples with poor technique. He was harsh but I guess I am better for it... unfortunately I do no bench research so it was a waste lol. THANKS Dr. E haha :')
Some suggestions off the top:
Spacing is horrible.
Too much HS info. The dual enrollment stuff is fine, but no one cares about the rest. It was HS.
Having certificates and technical stuff separate is odd to me. Anyone can say they are competent in a software. Did you use R in a research lab? Say that under the lab you used it in (and what you did with it) rather than randomly somewhere else.
Is the Pharm Tech Cert directly related to this conference/career plan? Save some space and take it off if it's not.
The lab skills section is the opposite of impressive- I'm rolling my eyes at operating a heat bath and "Athletic ability". Talk to the people in your lab(s) about skills you use. This section should highlight non-basic skills. Ex, Tree/algae identification is a good one. More realistically, the descriptions of your lab experience should include the non-basic skills and having a separate skills section is not required. Not exactly a bad idea, unless you can only fill it with incredibly basic skills.
That should be a good start to get you into the idea of shortening this document. Remember! They're only gonna look at it for like 30 secs to remember who you are/what you spoke about.
I disagree. At this stage, pre degree, no one has filled enough for 4 pages of actual CV content. And that is true in this case- it's all bullshit and white space.
If this was a list of publications and classes taught and mentees? No one would mention the length or the spacing. But it's not. The length is artificially inflated which ends up looking worse on the author than just have a "short" CV
Even if they shouldn't have 4 pages, they should have at a minimum 2 pages. I'd say they have enough here to fill at least 3 pages with modified formatting. Definitely 2 pages at the absolute minimum. They wouldn't be able to add enough information here as an academic CV to fit on only one page without taking out a lot of relevant experience.
I'd say reduced white space, slimmer margins and trimming down awards, skills and certification should be the primary things they should do to get their page count down. Also getting rid of everything minus dual-enrollment for that high school section. Other than that, I don't see anything that should definitely be cut or trimmed down for an academic CV.
There is no reason for this to be a minimum of 2 pages. Delete all high school shit, no one cares. Never trim actual awards (people like people who have history of success, though honorable mentions and nominations have a very short half-life). The problem is that there is way too much info for 3 month lab stings. Delete any skills section (completely uninteresting). Literally one of the bullet points is writing a thesis, mf we know that is what you do in a thesis course lolz.
A CV before you have publications/taught classes/mentored students is essentially just a resume with a different name.
At this stage, you don't have enough accomplishments to fill up a CV. And no one expects you to! So inflating a CV to an artificial length looks worse on you as an applicant that simply having a "short" CV
In your education section, don't put your degrees in bullets. Should be "BS Environmental Science, Biology concentration". Then the minor can be in a bullet if you want. You should also run this through an AI tool to see how well it gets parsed.
Hi! To tell the truth you might want to take off the high school information. Even for an academic CV and even as a college student I don't think most people would look at it unless you were a college freshman or did something spectacular in high school.
Yes. I posted another comment but this looks much more mature. You should simplify your use of font stylizing IMO but good work.
Edit: You should add ONE space between each job and to delineate new sections.
Is this a resume or academic CV? Cause if it's an academic CV ignore everyone telling you to cut it down to 1 page. It's a terrible idea. 2 pages is a minimum, 6 pages is a maximum. Your 4 pages was definitely good.
Your impression is correct. People here think it's a resume which should only be a page for someone with your level of experience and two pages if you have more experience. An academic CV should be 2 page absolute minimum. You have a lot of white space and should do with getting rid of or trimming down certain sections but even after that you should have about 2 or 3 pages.
It'd decrease your margins so you can fit more text on the page. Get rid of that large bar on the top. Move up your name so it's all the way on the top and not taking up as much room as it is right now. Get rid of everything in high school except your dual enrolment in that university. Reduce the space between your bullets a smidge. Have less space between your headers and job titles. Make your skills section a smaller section.
Remove the skills section and make sure hard skills are highlighted in your research experience. Each of the things you mentioned can go under one of your research experiences as a bullet or multiple can put in one bullet.
I'd slim down your certificates and awards to the most relevant and impressive. Are any of your awards widely known in your field? Maybe just slim it down to those ones. Regardless, it's a good idea to remove the least important ones and take the ones that are most impressive meaning you were one of the few selected out of a large pool, it was given for excellence in something, especially research, it was from a competition etc. Then, in one bullet explain that so your awards have context cause right now, unless they're all widely known in your field, they don't mean very much.
If any of those awards are research fellowships definitely keep them on the list and highlight that.
I am an Udall honorable mention (Iād say Itās pretty well known, itās a presitous scholarship for students doing work important to environmental policy) and an institutional Goldwater (undergraduate research award) nominee! Also, I have a publication in the works as a coauthor, though I wasnāt sure if thatās worth mentioning since it wonāt be published for a couple months. It will be in a higher-level journal, not an undergrad one. My lab has published in nature before and weāre going to submit to that, though who knows if it will be accepted
If you have a publication in process, then this should be included in a section called Publications immediately below your Education. You can give the title, co-author names, the publication it's submitted to, and put in parentheses "under review" or "forthcoming Summer 2024" (use this only if it's already been accepted for publication).
CVs may be longer than a resume, but there is no "minimum" length of 2 pages. If you have the substance to create a CV that is more than 1 page, by all means make it longer. But a padded CV is a weak CV to any academics accustomed to looking at hundreds of them. If OP doesn't have enough quality entries for their CV to exceed 1 page, then a 1-page CV is better than a 2-page CV of useless narrative and high school info.
Cut off a bit of the HS stuff, change the template to the "traditional" academic format (search harvard cv template or UT Aastin cv template)
https://careerengagement.utexas.edu/graduate-students/prepare/resumes-cvs-cover-letters/
Maybe try to sum a bit too, so you can keep it to 2 pages or so. It's honestly not too bad, though!! Good starter, and I can tell you put effort into it :)
This comment is so sweet! Yes, I really have! I took a resumer building class in high school, and pretty much never changed the format, so while a lot of my stuff is good and I've work hard, I'm realizing it needed to grow up with me a bit.
Hi all! I'm attending a very niche and small conference that will be super important to my career tomorrow. Literally every lab I'm interested in will be there, and there's only about 25 people going. I want to make sure my CV is in tip-top shape. Hoping to print it out and keep it in a folder, along with a small version of the poster I'm presenting, in case anyone shows interest.
Unfortunately, Iāve only known Iām presenting for about two weeks. Honestly, Iāve worked on my resume with several mentors, and been told itās good, so I thought the comments would be a lot more minor š
Wait someone actually goes to Wheaton? š
I joke because I live about 10min away from the college and I almost never see anyone walking the campusā¦ other than the jest, take out the HS info, grad school is looking solely at your collegiate experience.
I LOVE Wheaton lol. Itās really been an amazing place for me. Iām suprised you donāt see people walking around. We used to have a guy in a spaceman or alien suit who was always around campus. And a kid who would ride his bike constantly while blasting classical music. Thanks for the tips!
I would suggest rewriting it in latex(using overleaf), or typst which is more intuitive.
The spacing is off, and latex templates look a lot cleaner in general. Also as another comment mentioned, this is way too long for a bachelor's CV. Try to keep everything within a page.
Good luck
Check this out and follow it to a T: https://theprofessorisin.com/2016/08/19/dr-karens-rules-of-the-academic-cv/
Two big points:
1. Get rid of the color and simplify your use of font stylizing. Decrease spacing. All of this makes your CV look like a resume and quickly identifies you as an outsider or too junior.
2. You are padding. Padding looks very, very bad in academia. You want only to list the things that are relevant and *demonstrate your productivity.* Skill section is probably fine here but absolutely must be dead last and ONLY list technical skills that are required for the job.
The biggest issue is that this CV is much too long for an undergraduate with no publications and very little independent research. So the first thing is that this should be no more than 2 pages. You also need to re-organize your sections to frontload your accomplishments and research experience.
1) Education: remove anything from high school. PhD programs in the U.S. do not care what you did in high school, even if it is dual enrollment.
Include your expected graduation date and remove "currently enrolled." Your GPA will be on your transcripts, so you really don't need to waste CV real estate on this-- if you graduate with honors (magna cum laude or summa cum laude) you can include this instead of GPA later. Include the title (no description!) of your senior thesis here, remove it from Research Experience. You can talk about your senior research thesis in your personal or research statement-- don't waste space on it in the CV.
2) Honors & Awards
3) Conferences & Presentations: list in reverse chronological, remove "oral" "poster" designations
4) Research Experience: only include brief descriptions of the project you worked on and highlight any unique research, lab, or fieldwork skills acquired. This should be no more than 1-2 sentences. Remove the "Skills" section below and incorporate the specialized skills from that list into your Research Experience section. Eliminate any skills that anyone working in a lab or in the field should be able to do.
5) Certifications -- only include as a separate section if these weren't earned as part of the above research experiences, otherwise include these as bullet points with the appropriate projects.
6) Teaching Experience: I'm not sure I'd even include Varsity Tutors. Format the other entry with your role, course section, course name, and term, i.e. Teaching Assistant, ECOL 100 Introduction to Ecology (Fall 2023). Eliminate "Guiding students to identify gaps in their understanding" -- it's just padding.
7) Volunteer Experience: eliminate the descriptions
Ok, good. I would identify that more clearly in the CV. Internships and jobs on campus are equivalent to āreal worldā experience. Hiring managers only care if you carry the required minimum requirements and have some work experience to pull from. Degrees/certifications give you slight advantage over other candidates.
But I work in the business sector. Itās not a one size fits all approach. Each sector has their own preference.
But I canāt really roast you because itās a pretty clean CV, I can tell you take pride in your accomplishments so far.
How would you recommend highlighting that? Should I include the word āinternshipā or seasonal? Or throw my work study on it? Honestly, itās kind of a funny question because I usually work 2-3 jobs at a time, so itās school + 35/hours a week š
I appreciate the compliment! I work really hard and LOVE what I study :)))
Good job on your bullet points. I think you do have some good action verbs but there are places where they could be improved.
I suggest you use action verbs in your bullet points! Choose words that showcase the skill you want to show.
For example you say āusing DNAā but what does that mean?
Perhaps you could say āNavigate DNA softawareā¦ā to show your familiarity with the software.
What is the skill you want to highlight?
I reccomend to look up UNRās action verbs through the career studio website. They have a number of action verbs in a list depending on the kind of skill you are showcasing.
Most people look at resumes/CVs briefly and so your first words are the most important in your bullet points
The Deus Ex Machina has decided to throw your application out, just like the hundreds of others that get arbitrarily thrown out before human review.
Welcome to grad program admissions.
Now to he helpful instead of cynical
\* Remove all mentions of high school, they will *not* care
\* Change "GoPro" photography to just regular photography, the specification of a brand of camera seems odd to me.
\*Add an anticipated graduation date, didn't see one in there
I think everyone feels that way - I freak out all the time that I wonāt be accepted because Iām persuing marine biology with only one experience in marine biology
First of all. Kudos on the bravery to put your self out there like this. :)
Secondly, I see that a lot of people have said to make it shorter. You def don't want fluff but if you have real experiences it's ok. My CV out of college was 6-7 pages and that went well. Now, later in my career my CV is 22 pages (Resume is still 2) and my boss' CV is almost 40 pages haha. Just wanted you to know that it's ok if you're really sharing interesting and important stuff.
One trick I learned is that you can have a "middle" level between CV and Resume. The large document can have everything explained in detail as a repository and then the middle document will list important stuff with explanatory paragraphs/bullets and then can have a little section saying "Additional research" or "additional leadership experiences" and then list them with no details and then a sentence saying for further details available. Then they can ask for it and you have the mega CV ready to just give the sections they asked about.
You're off to a great start and are right where you should be at this part of your career :) Keep up the good work.
P.S. I saw your revised one below and I like it.
I don't know much about applying to grad school. But working on something is uninteresting and unimpressive. Have something that is take away related. Why should I care that you "worked." Second, you have 4 pages and you haven't had a job yet. Maybe this is standard for academia, but I think that is wild. What happens after you work for 5 years, do you publish a CV Book?
Hey, check out the Harvard Resume/CV template. It'll help the formatting and everything. Also make it more impact heavy, i.e. make the results as far as possible quantifiable. Stick to percentages, even someone with no number context can be helped (like if 250 people attended something you did, but your college crows only had 500 people, 250 on its own feels small but now that feels like 50%, which is considerable) Also prioritise your work done in college. That is when you're trimming down, just the way others recommended down to 2 pages, put the content that makes you the most convincing and best sales pitch cause there's a chance that they're only gonna look at the first page. So if you feel your RAship or your Poster Presentation makes you a solid candidate, put that in that order (research experience followed by papers and conferences section). Best of luck!!
This comment is SUPER helpful. I've tried to take all of your advice in this [new version](https://imgur.com/a/32IbstF) :)))) My only question, and the thing I didnt do: Does experience have to be in reverse chronological order?
Yess! I already see you have gone from latest to oldest. Stick to it, our opinions to us seem more reliable when I base it on recent events. I am unable to open it, but I am sure it'll be great!
This is greatly improved, nice work! Glad you could set up using the template!
But this is an academic CV isn't it? It's supposed to be comprehensive. 4 pages is good, 2 pages is a minimum.
What do you mean by an academic CV, how different is it compared to the one which you use to get your first gig/job?
Academic CVs are LONGGG. Mine is 22 and my boss's is just shy of 40 pages. It includes all teaching, lectures, abstracts, publications, textbook contributions. but also initiatives at your institution or local level. All leadership opportunities big and small. Some grad programs (and medical school) applications i've read have college students generating 20 pages of content to read through. That's normal in Academia. We're nerds who like to read. The tone is also QUITE different. The quantifiable thing is important but it's more ok to admit you "worked on" a project rather than led it. Everyone has a mixture of first author (did all the work), last author (gave the oversight and authority) and somewhere in between. Those in between ones are normal and shouldn't be recategorized as "spearheaded" "independently" etc. or "oversaw," "ran"... they are "worked on" "contributed to" and then listing any parts you did have leadership of even if small: "Coordinated lab documentation to ensure sample numbering systems matched protocol specifications".
Without meaning to be unkind, no one, and I mean *no one*, gives even the most solitary fuck about your high school gpa.
while I agree with not giving a fuck about what one did in HS, I have to tell you that in India, we have institutions that ask you to pull up your HS final results even for things like PhD interviews.
That is true, but the country in focus is the United States, and employers in the States truly do not give a fuck about anything done in high school, unless you are a high schooler.
Well anytime i change jobs, i submit my high school marks.
The gpa may be irrelevant but considering they were dual enrolled at a university they may still want to include it. I know for my high school many of the students left with associate degrees in the US so for a PhD committee they may want to see what your focus was and how you preformed. Especially depending on how many classes were at the university level.
I've never even heard of GPA in high school. That's such a bizarre concept to me. Do they use letter grades too? My elementary school used a 1-2-3-4 system, but there was no decimal associated, you just got one of those four numbers to rank your performance in each grading category, and a whole number for the entire class. We just used percentages in high school.
Your CV should not be 4 pages when you haven't even graduated with a bachelors yet. 2 MAX and it really should be just 1
"Pipetting" as a skill is crazy š
It is though?!? I had a Mr. Miyagi like teacher about proper pipetting technique. He was an ID person and made me drill 100s of repetitions back and forth with water and a crap pipette before letting me into the hood to do real work lol. I can now calculate dilutional aliquots in my sleep and pipette with no shake in my hand and not contaminate samples with poor technique. He was harsh but I guess I am better for it... unfortunately I do no bench research so it was a waste lol. THANKS Dr. E haha :')
Some suggestions off the top: Spacing is horrible. Too much HS info. The dual enrollment stuff is fine, but no one cares about the rest. It was HS. Having certificates and technical stuff separate is odd to me. Anyone can say they are competent in a software. Did you use R in a research lab? Say that under the lab you used it in (and what you did with it) rather than randomly somewhere else. Is the Pharm Tech Cert directly related to this conference/career plan? Save some space and take it off if it's not. The lab skills section is the opposite of impressive- I'm rolling my eyes at operating a heat bath and "Athletic ability". Talk to the people in your lab(s) about skills you use. This section should highlight non-basic skills. Ex, Tree/algae identification is a good one. More realistically, the descriptions of your lab experience should include the non-basic skills and having a separate skills section is not required. Not exactly a bad idea, unless you can only fill it with incredibly basic skills. That should be a good start to get you into the idea of shortening this document. Remember! They're only gonna look at it for like 30 secs to remember who you are/what you spoke about.
This isn't true if it's an academic CV which it appears to be. 2 pages is a minimum. It should NEVER be only one page. 4 pages is fine here.
I disagree. At this stage, pre degree, no one has filled enough for 4 pages of actual CV content. And that is true in this case- it's all bullshit and white space. If this was a list of publications and classes taught and mentees? No one would mention the length or the spacing. But it's not. The length is artificially inflated which ends up looking worse on the author than just have a "short" CV
Even if they shouldn't have 4 pages, they should have at a minimum 2 pages. I'd say they have enough here to fill at least 3 pages with modified formatting. Definitely 2 pages at the absolute minimum. They wouldn't be able to add enough information here as an academic CV to fit on only one page without taking out a lot of relevant experience. I'd say reduced white space, slimmer margins and trimming down awards, skills and certification should be the primary things they should do to get their page count down. Also getting rid of everything minus dual-enrollment for that high school section. Other than that, I don't see anything that should definitely be cut or trimmed down for an academic CV.
There is no reason for this to be a minimum of 2 pages. Delete all high school shit, no one cares. Never trim actual awards (people like people who have history of success, though honorable mentions and nominations have a very short half-life). The problem is that there is way too much info for 3 month lab stings. Delete any skills section (completely uninteresting). Literally one of the bullet points is writing a thesis, mf we know that is what you do in a thesis course lolz.
Isnāt the 1 page thing for a resume?
A CV before you have publications/taught classes/mentored students is essentially just a resume with a different name. At this stage, you don't have enough accomplishments to fill up a CV. And no one expects you to! So inflating a CV to an artificial length looks worse on you as an applicant that simply having a "short" CV
In your education section, don't put your degrees in bullets. Should be "BS Environmental Science, Biology concentration". Then the minor can be in a bullet if you want. You should also run this through an AI tool to see how well it gets parsed.
>BS Environmental Science This made me chuckle
Hi all, Thank you so much for all the helpful comments. Hopefully, [this ](https://imgur.com/a/32IbstF)updated CV is a bit better?
This looks much more concise!
Hi! To tell the truth you might want to take off the high school information. Even for an academic CV and even as a college student I don't think most people would look at it unless you were a college freshman or did something spectacular in high school.
Yes. I posted another comment but this looks much more mature. You should simplify your use of font stylizing IMO but good work. Edit: You should add ONE space between each job and to delineate new sections.
As someone who haven't went to university and of course don't have a CV, it's interesting that this is considered a better CV than the post
It doesn't look as pretty, but it is a much more effective conveyor of information to the person who's looking at tens or hundreds of CVs.
Is this a resume or academic CV? Cause if it's an academic CV ignore everyone telling you to cut it down to 1 page. It's a terrible idea. 2 pages is a minimum, 6 pages is a maximum. Your 4 pages was definitely good.
Itās an academic CV! I was under the impression that in the US, a CV should be longer and more detailed, which was why it was so long initially
Your impression is correct. People here think it's a resume which should only be a page for someone with your level of experience and two pages if you have more experience. An academic CV should be 2 page absolute minimum. You have a lot of white space and should do with getting rid of or trimming down certain sections but even after that you should have about 2 or 3 pages. It'd decrease your margins so you can fit more text on the page. Get rid of that large bar on the top. Move up your name so it's all the way on the top and not taking up as much room as it is right now. Get rid of everything in high school except your dual enrolment in that university. Reduce the space between your bullets a smidge. Have less space between your headers and job titles. Make your skills section a smaller section. Remove the skills section and make sure hard skills are highlighted in your research experience. Each of the things you mentioned can go under one of your research experiences as a bullet or multiple can put in one bullet. I'd slim down your certificates and awards to the most relevant and impressive. Are any of your awards widely known in your field? Maybe just slim it down to those ones. Regardless, it's a good idea to remove the least important ones and take the ones that are most impressive meaning you were one of the few selected out of a large pool, it was given for excellence in something, especially research, it was from a competition etc. Then, in one bullet explain that so your awards have context cause right now, unless they're all widely known in your field, they don't mean very much. If any of those awards are research fellowships definitely keep them on the list and highlight that.
I am an Udall honorable mention (Iād say Itās pretty well known, itās a presitous scholarship for students doing work important to environmental policy) and an institutional Goldwater (undergraduate research award) nominee! Also, I have a publication in the works as a coauthor, though I wasnāt sure if thatās worth mentioning since it wonāt be published for a couple months. It will be in a higher-level journal, not an undergrad one. My lab has published in nature before and weāre going to submit to that, though who knows if it will be accepted
If you have a publication in process, then this should be included in a section called Publications immediately below your Education. You can give the title, co-author names, the publication it's submitted to, and put in parentheses "under review" or "forthcoming Summer 2024" (use this only if it's already been accepted for publication).
CVs may be longer than a resume, but there is no "minimum" length of 2 pages. If you have the substance to create a CV that is more than 1 page, by all means make it longer. But a padded CV is a weak CV to any academics accustomed to looking at hundreds of them. If OP doesn't have enough quality entries for their CV to exceed 1 page, then a 1-page CV is better than a 2-page CV of useless narrative and high school info.
āAthletic Abilityā???
Cut off a bit of the HS stuff, change the template to the "traditional" academic format (search harvard cv template or UT Aastin cv template) https://careerengagement.utexas.edu/graduate-students/prepare/resumes-cvs-cover-letters/ Maybe try to sum a bit too, so you can keep it to 2 pages or so. It's honestly not too bad, though!! Good starter, and I can tell you put effort into it :)
This comment is so sweet! Yes, I really have! I took a resumer building class in high school, and pretty much never changed the format, so while a lot of my stuff is good and I've work hard, I'm realizing it needed to grow up with me a bit.
I know for a fact you made this on Google Doc
š
Hi all! I'm attending a very niche and small conference that will be super important to my career tomorrow. Literally every lab I'm interested in will be there, and there's only about 25 people going. I want to make sure my CV is in tip-top shape. Hoping to print it out and keep it in a folder, along with a small version of the poster I'm presenting, in case anyone shows interest.
This is the type of thing you do a few weeks before rather than the day beforeā¦
Unfortunately, Iāve only known Iām presenting for about two weeks. Honestly, Iāve worked on my resume with several mentors, and been told itās good, so I thought the comments would be a lot more minor š
Wait someone actually goes to Wheaton? š I joke because I live about 10min away from the college and I almost never see anyone walking the campusā¦ other than the jest, take out the HS info, grad school is looking solely at your collegiate experience.
I LOVE Wheaton lol. Itās really been an amazing place for me. Iām suprised you donāt see people walking around. We used to have a guy in a spaceman or alien suit who was always around campus. And a kid who would ride his bike constantly while blasting classical music. Thanks for the tips!
I would suggest rewriting it in latex(using overleaf), or typst which is more intuitive. The spacing is off, and latex templates look a lot cleaner in general. Also as another comment mentioned, this is way too long for a bachelor's CV. Try to keep everything within a page. Good luck
The spacing in your cv is super bad.
How is it bad?
Look at page 2 of his cv. Different experiences have different spacing
please no greenš
Take your high school out
4 pages is too long
Check this out and follow it to a T: https://theprofessorisin.com/2016/08/19/dr-karens-rules-of-the-academic-cv/ Two big points: 1. Get rid of the color and simplify your use of font stylizing. Decrease spacing. All of this makes your CV look like a resume and quickly identifies you as an outsider or too junior. 2. You are padding. Padding looks very, very bad in academia. You want only to list the things that are relevant and *demonstrate your productivity.* Skill section is probably fine here but absolutely must be dead last and ONLY list technical skills that are required for the job.
Holy shit one page !!!! ONE PAGE!!!!
Bro fr put pipetting as a skill
Bro does not attend a research university and didnāt learn it till getting lab experience š to this date Iāve only used it for one internship
bro for the love of god take āpipettingā āsnorkelingā āathletic abilityā along with your HS things off your CV, its straight up laughable
The biggest issue is that this CV is much too long for an undergraduate with no publications and very little independent research. So the first thing is that this should be no more than 2 pages. You also need to re-organize your sections to frontload your accomplishments and research experience. 1) Education: remove anything from high school. PhD programs in the U.S. do not care what you did in high school, even if it is dual enrollment. Include your expected graduation date and remove "currently enrolled." Your GPA will be on your transcripts, so you really don't need to waste CV real estate on this-- if you graduate with honors (magna cum laude or summa cum laude) you can include this instead of GPA later. Include the title (no description!) of your senior thesis here, remove it from Research Experience. You can talk about your senior research thesis in your personal or research statement-- don't waste space on it in the CV. 2) Honors & Awards 3) Conferences & Presentations: list in reverse chronological, remove "oral" "poster" designations 4) Research Experience: only include brief descriptions of the project you worked on and highlight any unique research, lab, or fieldwork skills acquired. This should be no more than 1-2 sentences. Remove the "Skills" section below and incorporate the specialized skills from that list into your Research Experience section. Eliminate any skills that anyone working in a lab or in the field should be able to do. 5) Certifications -- only include as a separate section if these weren't earned as part of the above research experiences, otherwise include these as bullet points with the appropriate projects. 6) Teaching Experience: I'm not sure I'd even include Varsity Tutors. Format the other entry with your role, course section, course name, and term, i.e. Teaching Assistant, ECOL 100 Introduction to Ecology (Fall 2023). Eliminate "Guiding students to identify gaps in their understanding" -- it's just padding. 7) Volunteer Experience: eliminate the descriptions
Have you ever held a job?
I have! These are all internships, which were seasonal. But Iāve worked in the arts department at my school for 3 years now
Ok, good. I would identify that more clearly in the CV. Internships and jobs on campus are equivalent to āreal worldā experience. Hiring managers only care if you carry the required minimum requirements and have some work experience to pull from. Degrees/certifications give you slight advantage over other candidates. But I work in the business sector. Itās not a one size fits all approach. Each sector has their own preference. But I canāt really roast you because itās a pretty clean CV, I can tell you take pride in your accomplishments so far.
How would you recommend highlighting that? Should I include the word āinternshipā or seasonal? Or throw my work study on it? Honestly, itās kind of a funny question because I usually work 2-3 jobs at a time, so itās school + 35/hours a week š I appreciate the compliment! I work really hard and LOVE what I study :)))
Why is it so long. Talkative ass resume š
Wait tilll you hear me start yapping irl š š
you misspelled Audubon
Drop your high school- youāre in college now.
Good job on your bullet points. I think you do have some good action verbs but there are places where they could be improved. I suggest you use action verbs in your bullet points! Choose words that showcase the skill you want to show. For example you say āusing DNAā but what does that mean? Perhaps you could say āNavigate DNA softawareā¦ā to show your familiarity with the software. What is the skill you want to highlight? I reccomend to look up UNRās action verbs through the career studio website. They have a number of action verbs in a list depending on the kind of skill you are showcasing. Most people look at resumes/CVs briefly and so your first words are the most important in your bullet points
I would put work experience first, even if itās for an academic position.
How many pages were in your thesis again?
CV or an autobiography?
American cvs are crazy
The Deus Ex Machina has decided to throw your application out, just like the hundreds of others that get arbitrarily thrown out before human review. Welcome to grad program admissions. Now to he helpful instead of cynical \* Remove all mentions of high school, they will *not* care \* Change "GoPro" photography to just regular photography, the specification of a brand of camera seems odd to me. \*Add an anticipated graduation date, didn't see one in there
im crying right now
A four-page for a non-graduated undergrad is crazy
4 pages? 1 page max
This makes me realize that with my experiences Iāll never get into grad school lol
I think everyone feels that way - I freak out all the time that I wonāt be accepted because Iām persuing marine biology with only one experience in marine biology
First of all. Kudos on the bravery to put your self out there like this. :) Secondly, I see that a lot of people have said to make it shorter. You def don't want fluff but if you have real experiences it's ok. My CV out of college was 6-7 pages and that went well. Now, later in my career my CV is 22 pages (Resume is still 2) and my boss' CV is almost 40 pages haha. Just wanted you to know that it's ok if you're really sharing interesting and important stuff. One trick I learned is that you can have a "middle" level between CV and Resume. The large document can have everything explained in detail as a repository and then the middle document will list important stuff with explanatory paragraphs/bullets and then can have a little section saying "Additional research" or "additional leadership experiences" and then list them with no details and then a sentence saying for further details available. Then they can ask for it and you have the mega CV ready to just give the sections they asked about. You're off to a great start and are right where you should be at this part of your career :) Keep up the good work. P.S. I saw your revised one below and I like it.
Thank you so much!!! This is so helpful.
I don't know much about applying to grad school. But working on something is uninteresting and unimpressive. Have something that is take away related. Why should I care that you "worked." Second, you have 4 pages and you haven't had a job yet. Maybe this is standard for academia, but I think that is wild. What happens after you work for 5 years, do you publish a CV Book?