How to Write a Resume for Graduate School Applications

Read the application instructions first, because programs use the terms loosely. Boise State's career center says many graduate programs ask for either a CV or a resume depending on whether the program is more academic or applied. Research doctorates and thesis master's programs lean toward a CV; professional programs such as an MBA, MPA or MSW usually want a resume that reads like a job application.

Length differs too. Case Western Reserve's career center describes a resume as a one- or two-page summary and a CV as a longer, more detailed document of two or more pages. For applicants, Cal State Long Beach's Graduate Center says programs usually want a shorter CV of two to three pages at most, with bullet points under each experience.

CSULB's Graduate Center lists these headings for a graduate school CV, in order of importance: Education, Research Interests, Publications, Conference Presentations, Research Experiences, Teaching Experiences, Skills/Trainings, Professional Organizations, and Honors & Awards. Leave out any heading you have nothing to put under.

For an applied program, shift the weight: Education, Professional Experience, Leadership, Skills and Honors, with research included where it relates to the field. Either way, these are the building blocks:

• Education: degree, major and minor, university, graduation date, GPA, thesis title and advisor, and four to six relevant upper-level courses.
• Research interests: one line naming the questions you want to work on, matched to faculty in the program.
• Research experience: project, lab and principal investigator, dates, methods and your contribution.
• Publications and presentations: full citations in your field's style.
• Teaching and mentoring: TA roles, tutoring, lab instruction, writing center work.
• Work experience: jobs and internships, with more detail for applied programs.
• Skills: lab techniques, statistical software, programming languages, instruments, and foreign languages with your level.
• Honors, grants and fellowships: with the year and the awarding body.

Give each research role a heading line like a job: your title (Undergraduate Research Assistant), the lab or principal investigator, the department, the university and dates. Then write two to four bullets covering the research question, the methods you personally used, your share of the work and any output: a dataset, a poster, a thesis chapter, a co-authored paper.

Be specific about methods, because the faculty reading your file want to know what you can already do in their lab: "ran 40 qPCR assays", "cleaned and analyzed survey data from 1,200 respondents in R", "coded 300 interview transcripts in NVivo". Honors theses and independent studies belong in this section too.

Use the citation style of your field (APA, AMA, ACS, IEEE or Chicago), list items newest first, and keep your name in the same position the paper gives it so readers see your authorship order. Separate peer-reviewed publications from presentations and posters.

Label unpublished work exactly: "Manuscript submitted for publication", "Under review" or "Manuscript in preparation". Never list a paper as published or accepted before it is. A poster at your university's undergraduate research symposium is a real presentation and belongs on the page.

CSULB's rule of thumb is to ask whether the information under a heading is likely to play a big role in your admission, and to list it higher if so. Education almost always comes first. In fields like clinical psychology, CSULB says research lab work, clinical volunteering and conference presentations should sit higher on the page, while relatively minor items such as Dean's List placement belong lower.

The table below shows typical orders by program type. Whatever the order, keep the resume consistent with your statement of purpose: projects you describe in the essay should appear on the resume with the same titles and dates.

One to two pages is the usual range for a resume, the length Case Western's career center gives, and CSULB puts a graduate school CV at two to three pages at most. Most applicants coming straight from a bachelor's degree fit comfortably in one or two pages.

Do not stretch to fill space. A two-page document padded with wide margins, a list of every course you took and minor campus awards reads weaker than a tight page with real research and teaching detail.

Three things change. Academic detail moves up: GPA, thesis, advanced coursework and research carry more weight than they would with an employer. An objective is unnecessary because your statement of purpose does that job; research applicants can add a one-line Research Interests section instead. And unrelated jobs shrink to one line each, unless you are applying to a professional program where work experience is the main evidence.

The reader is a faculty committee, not a recruiter, so the vocabulary of your field is expected. Keep the format plain and send only what is requested. MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, for example, provides a place in the application to upload a CV or resume and discourages applicants from sending copies of awards, journal articles and other extra documents.

A fictional applicant at a fictional university. Numbers are illustrations.

Formatted for a fictional psychology applicant using APA style.

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• College Student Resume Example and Writing Guide

We opened every page below on that date. Pay, rules and requirements change, so check the source before you rely on a detail.

1. Boise State University Career Services: Graduate School (CV or resume depending on whether the program is academic or applied)
2. Case Western Reserve University Career Center: Resume Tips for Graduate Students (resume one or two pages, CV two or more pages, optional research, publication and teaching sections)
3. California State University, Long Beach Graduate Center: Writing a CV or Résumé for Graduate School (grad school CV of 2-3 pages at most, heading list and order of importance)
4. MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science: Graduate Admissions FAQs (CV/resume upload in the application, no extra documents such as awards or articles)