23 Developing a CV for Grad School
By: Alice Cavanaugh
Building and editing a curriculum vitae (CV) is an important task for students before entering and throughout graduate school. Distinct from a traditional resume (which tends to be more succinct, selective, and focused on work experiences), a CV provides a longer and more detailed history of your academic background and research. You can use your CV for applying to graduate programs, for funding competitions, and for teaching and research job applications. Creating, and then continually updating, a “master” academic CV towards the beginning of your graduate career is one way to save time and effort as opportunities arise over the course of your school years; update it as you present at conferences, take on new teaching roles, receive awards, and publish your work to keep track of all of your experiences.
Deciding what information to include in your CV is an important initial task. McMaster provides a guide for faculty members to use that offers a useful template for the types of activities and honours you may wish to include on your own CV, as well as their ordering. In applying for roles or funding opportunities in the future, you can edit and revise your CV to highlight those aspects of your experience that are most relevant. While creativity and design elements can be used in resume design to help make your application materials standout, academic CVs tend to be more sedate and formulaic in their presentation. Make limited use of fonts and colours in your master CV, and sparingly introduce design or text elements in other versions to emphasize particular facets of your experience.
As you develop your CV, consider asking classmates and research colleagues at a similar stage of training to see how they have formatted their own CVs; your supervisor and other mentors may also have CVs from their graduate training that you can ask to review. After you have completed a first draft, you may also wish to consider sharing your CV with these mentors for their feedback on design and presentation.
Recommended Resources:
How to Write a CV developed by the McGill University Career Planning Service
CV Worksheet developed by the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus Career Centre
Resumes and CV Guide developed by Cornell University Graduate School
Developing a Resume and Cover Letter Open Access Module developed by CompleteStudent.ca and hosted by Western University