How to Write an Academic CV or Resume For Scholarship to Study Abroad:
It’s a great challenge for Students How to Write an Academic CV For Scholarships to Study Abroad. Also if you are applying to academic jobs or Fully Funded Scholarships to continue Undergraduate programs, Master’s Degrees, and Ph.D. or Internships or Fellowship. So the topic of today’s discussion is academic CVs. Also Check: UK Student VISA without IELTS Complete Guideline
You might be brushing up on your CV right now.
- Maybe it’s because you’re applying to grad school,
- maybe it’s because you’re applying to jobs,
- maybe you just want to make sure that it’s nice and pretty and up to date for your E-portfolios.
So this topic covers the basics of what should be on a CV as well as some overarching principles and general tips.
So first of all what is a CV?
It’s basically an encyclopedia of everything you’ve ever done in an academic context:
- Education,
- Publications,
- Experience,
- Internships if any
- Conferences attended
- Wards, etc.
And it’s not specific to any particular thing that you might be using it for. This is in contrast to a resume, which tends to be fitted for a particular job that you’re applying for and it tends to be focused more on skills and the things that you bring to the table for that particular job. A CV as a result tends to be much longer than a resume.
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My CV right now is 19 pages long. That said when I was applying to Ph.D. programs it was two pages long. They get longer over time because you never take anything away, you just add stuff to them. Most of the time when you are applying to an academic position whether that’s as a student or for a job they want a CV as opposed to a resume. However, make sure that you look at the specific instructions to make sure that you’re giving them what they want.
Tip# 1: How to Write an Academic CV
So my first tip, and maybe the most important, is to look at examples of people’s CVs in your discipline. It is very common for faculty and even Ph.D. students to have a copy of their CV linked to their E-portfolios. You’ll get examples not only for format but also things to include, things you might have forgotten, and also if there are any conventions specific to your discipline.
So for example for me in computer science, and information science, it is very uncommon to list manuscripts in process or things that are under submission. This is in part because the publication cycle in computer science tends to be quite fast. However, in disciplines where publication is quite a long process where you’re entirely publishing in journals or even you’re publishing books, it can be quite common to list manuscripts under preparation in your CV. So you just need to find out whether that’s the norm in your field or not.
Tip# 2: How to Write an Academic CV
My second tip is to organize things in such a way that they emphasize whatever puts your best foot forward, and also what is relevant to your academic career. This means education and research over non-academic work experience, usually. But again make sure that you organize it to emphasize your best attributes, but as they relate to academia. This means that your structure might be different than other people’s. For example, here’s my CV from my first year as a Ph.D. student. Notice how it starts with academic experience and then has professional work experience.
Now I’d probably swap research and teaching here since research is typically more important. But these are things that matter more than that I worked as a technical writer for a year. This might have benefited from putting publications at the top too since they’re really important. But on the other hand here there isn’t a lot, so it might not be worth emphasizing. But again these things can be quite different per person. So for example if you graduated from undergrad and then worked for a few years as a user experience researcher at Google, and now you’re applying for computer science Ph.D. programs, that is far more impressive than the fact that I worked at the zoo. So you might consider leading with that, particularly if you don’t have much research or teaching experience.
Similarly, if you’re on the academic job market and you’re applying primarily for teaching positions, you would probably want to swap research and teaching and emphasize teaching first. Another example, you often see awards and recognition listed near the start of a CV, but if for example you only have one or they’re not that impressive, you might want to put them at the end. But in sum, don’t feel like you have to structure your CV in any particular order based on what other people look like. You can change the structure to emphasize what makes you look best, as long as you’re following some basic conventions like you should put your education at the top. Other than do your best go forward.
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Tip# 3: How to Write an Academic CV
Next tip, include detail or not as it seems appropriate. So for example you might notice that in CV examples there isn’t any detail under the work or research positions. I think that particularly for my earliest CV this probably would have been helpful now. You don’t put much here, just a few bullet points or a couple of sentences. Particularly for research positions, you can use this to,
For example, emphasize what kind of methodological experience you have: conducted interviews, designed surveys, and created novel scrapers to collect data. These are the kinds of details that tend to drop off your CV as you get more experience, in part because publications start to serve as a proxy for the things that you can do. But early on it can possibly be useful, but again it’s not really required, so that’s entirely up to you. I think and again if you are a student or a prospective student, looking at the CVs of students to see what kinds of things you like about what they do might be really useful for making this decision.
You can also include optionally at the top of your CV a short statement about your research interests or objective. For example, you’ll see that on the CV that I used when I was on the faculty job market.
Tip# 4:How to Write an Academic CV
All right, my next tip is that when you’re organizing things, try to clarify slash be honest about your publications. There are lots of different kinds of publications and it is completely appropriate to list all of them on your CV. But there’s a big difference between a peer-reviewed journal article and a small workshop position paper. Sometimes it might be totally obvious which is which, but not all of the time. So the more publications that you have the more subsections you will probably have. So in my current CV, for example, I separate full, rigorously peer-reviewed papers which include journal articles and, because it’s computer science, archival conference proceedings.
But I also have a section for short conference publications, which includes things like posters and late-breaking works. And there’s a note that these are peer-reviewed but appear in proceedings as extended abstracts, and in my discipline that has meaning to people, they know what that means, and they’re not going to, you know, count a poster the same way they will a journal article. Now if you don’t have any publications yet it’s fine to include all of your publications in one section, but in that case, you might want to have notations for what kind of publication it is.
For example, just a poster or workshop position paper next to the citation. If you have information about, for example, the impact factor of a journal or the acceptance rate for a conference, that’s something that you can optionally include as well. All right, the next really important thing make it look professional. I hope this goes without saying, but you might notice that later CVs look a lot nicer than earlier CVs. This is partly because I didn’t really know what I was doing and because when I was about to go on the job market I went and looked at a lot of people’s CVs both to get ideas for formatting, how to organize things, what kind of sub-headers to include, what kind of information to include, things that I hadn’t even thought to put on my CV before. Now there aren’t rules for things like font, for example. However, you should just make sure that it looks nice. Show that you prepare by putting some effort into it.
And have someone else proofread it to make sure that there aren’t any spelling errors, formatting mistakes, etc. Just like grammatical errors in a statement of purpose or a research statement can look bad, so can those same kinds of mistakes on a CV. It just suggests a lack of attention to detail which is not something that you want to do.
Now an FAQ, how long should it be? How to Write an Academic CV
So if whatever you’re applying to asks for a CV and there’s no page limit specified, you give them the whole thing. Even if it’s 19 pages. However if it says, for example, give us a two-page CV, then what that means is that you should abridge it. And a good way to abridge a CV is to use the word ‘selected’. Selected publications, selected awards, selected internships, or whatever. Anything where you’re not including everything that would be on your CV, you can signal that with that word. And then you can choose to include the things that you think are the most impressive and will put your best foot forward.
One thing that I even do on my CV now is I have a section at the end for selected media coverage. And this is because it would be very very very long if I noted every newspaper article that has a quote from me. So those are what I consider some general principles for CV writing.
Now I’m going to tell you about one CV as an example of one organizational scheme and also the kinds of things that you might include on a CV. Now, this is by no means the only way to do a CV and I can’t even tell you whether or not it’s best practice. But again I think it’s good to look at examples to get ideas and please look at ones from your discipline. Also, remember I am currently in my sixth year as a faculty member.
If you are finishing your Ph.D. and applying to faculty jobs, your CV is going to look very different. If you’re applying to Ph.D. programs your CV is going to look very different.
These are from my first year as a Ph.D. student, my fourth year, and when I was on the job market in my sixth year as a Ph.D. student. I was actually kind of a late bloomer as an academic as you will see if you look at those.
How to Write an Academic CV
There is hope even if you’re not publishing until your fourth year. So of course at the top,
- You have your name,
- Your current position,
- Contact information.
- If you’re gonna put it on your E-portfolio I highly recommend having a last updated date because boy, do some people not update their CVs on their E-portfolio very often.
- If you are already in an academic job you will have your job typically at the top, but just in your academic positions, you usually don’t have other kinds of professional experience right at the very top.
- If you’re applying to academic jobs for the first time, typically you will have your education at the very top. Typically things should always be in reverse chronological order.
- If you are in a Ph.D. program right now, it is common to put the title of your dissertation if you have it and/or your advisor or even your entire committee if you have it, in part because this is sort of a signal for the sort of work that you’re doing.
I have awards and honors next. One common question is kind of how far back these should go and also what kinds of things they should include. I think that is a personal decision. For me these go back to undergrad, they’re only academic-related awards and things that I considered notable. How to Write an Academic CV
Next, I have publications on my CV, and this is going to be really long. How you organize these again is going to depend on a lot of different factors. I have journal articles first and then peer-reviewed conference publications next with a note – and if you are in computer science or a related field I highly recommend including something exactly like this – and it says, note: conference proceedings are peer-reviewed top-tier publication venues for computing. I have acceptance rates noted where I know them. You’ll also notice that I have a code for each of them, numbers that are chronological, highest at the top because then it’s easier to add stuff to it. This is completely optional, the reason that I have it is so that I can refer to publications when they relate to other things. So you might have noticed, for example, under awards that if an award was for, say, the best paper, there was then a notation to which paper that was. I have some different sections here, law review articles are separate, book sections, and chapters. Short conference publications I mentioned before. I also have a section for panels, which are also included in the proceedings. Then I have a big section for refereed non-archival publications. This basically means things like conference presentations at humanities-style conferences where you just submit an abstract and it’s not archival. Also workshop position papers, which are most often not archival and are sort of very lightly peer-reviewed. I’ve got this catch-all for other scholarly activities which include workshops that I have organized and participation in things, mostly workshops. How to Write an Academic CV
This is a little bit hard to understand. It also includes things like doctoral consortiums and like academic summer camps. Next, I have a section for talks and panels. I have keynotes first and then I have external talks. A piece of advice I got when I was putting together my CV for my reappointment, which is sort of like baby tenure, was to split apart external talks and talks that I gave at my university.
That kind of thing is probably less useful if you’re applying to jobs, etc, but I think it might be good for tenure because it emphasizes things that you’re doing for your university. But it’s more common to just have all your talks listed together. You can also often tell by looking at a faculty member’s CVs where they had job interviews. I have research funding next. It is very common to list research funding at the very top of a CV. This is something that I might do when I go up for tenure.
However, for the public CV that I put on my website, I don’t necessarily consider how much money I’ve brought in to be the thing that I want to put forward first. It’s entirely up to you though, I’ve seen it both ways. Here is also a place where I specifically use the notation from journal articles and talks etc to note which are related to which grant. Next, I have teaching and again if you are applying for teaching positions then you probably want to do teaching first and then research. I have courses taught, and teaching assistantships from when I was still a student, and I also list all of the guest lectures that I have given in different classes.
This again is something that I think is most useful for internal review at a university though also if you are applying for academic jobs it can actually be really useful to show the breadth of your teaching. Next, I have a section on student research mentoring. This is something that can be really useful to include if you are on the academic job market because it shows your capacity to be a good advisor and mentor. There of course is a whole lot more here once you are a faculty member. Last I have service. Now if you’re applying to Ph.D. programs you’re probably not going to have academic service yet, but if you do that’s kind of cool, you should include it. I have editorial and advisory positions, big professional service, positions like being part of the SIGCHI executive committee, conference organizing positions, etc. I have a list of all of the conference program committees that I’ve been on, and then I have a list of reviewing that I do. This includes a lot of conference reviewing which is why I have it listed per year. So for example I have reviewed for the CHI conference every year since 2012. That’s a lot of reviews! I also have listed all of the journals that I have reviewed as well as grant programs.
This is really useful for me too because I can go back and count how much reviewing I‘ve done when I do my annual performance review. And then finally near the very end of my CV, I have professional experience. Honestly, I don’t have a lot! I had practically never had a real job before I got my faculty job. You might notice one difference from my earlier CVs; at some point, I took off my job at the zoo. Of course, if you are a current Ph.D. student and you have really impressive internships, you might consider putting those much farther to the top of your CV than I have my stuff here. Because mine just isn’t really that relevant or interesting. How to Write an Academic CV
I didn’t have internships at Google or Facebook or whatever, but if you do you might consider popping those closer to the top. And finally, as I mentioned I have a section for selected popular press publications that I have written and selected press coverage. I have actually chosen what’s here based on whether it is related to specific research papers and I have that noted if you don’t have that much press coverage you might actually want to list all of it.
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And that is all I’ve got on my CV, all 19 pages of it. And now briefly I want to remind you what my CV looked like during my first year as a Ph.D. student. Those CVs look very very different, and it represents 10 years of work. I started my Ph.D. in 2009 and I am filming this in late 2020. So my final piece of advice that I want to give then is, to don’t be discouraged by putting your CV together and feeling like it’s not impressive enough. Imposter syndrome is real but remember that you should be worried about being the best that you can be and not comparing yourself to other people. Try to organize your CV to emphasize whatever you think is best and most compelling about you. All right, well that is all of my best advice and also I hope going topic of the CV is not too boring.
I wish you the very best of luck.
