Your Curriculum Vita
A curriculum vita (CV or simply "vita") is basically a resume tailored specifically to the research world. There are plenty of websites and books on how to write CVs, so I won't go over every tidbit on how to write one (don't worry, I'll give you some links). But, if you look at your favorite professor's CV with the intention of copying it, you may be quite dismayed - there will be information you don't have, and even entire headings that you'd have nothing to put under! Not to worry; schools do not expect you to have a CV that looks like something a tenured professor would have. Here are a few tips for beefing up a CV that is probably not very beefy yet - and of course it's not. You're not a professional researcher yet, so don't expect too much of yourself. Just get creative!
- Remember that while a resume is meant to be as short as possible (usually about one page), size does matter with a CV. You want it as long as possible, and those special pills promised in your spam e-mail won't help you here. See the Gaining Research Experience page if you want a few excellent ways to lengthen your CV. Barring that, I have a few other ideas.
- Include your GPAs. People will like to not have to flip through and decipher your transcripts to find this information. It's right there in front of them! A good place to put your GPAs is right after your degree and graduation date. For example: "College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA. M.A. in General Experimental Psychology, 2006. GPA: 3.73" (yeah, I made my good GPA the example, of course. Let's not talk about undergrad...)
- If you did an honors thesis (or something like that), put the title right up there with your degree. Flaunt it! Why not?
- This sort of thing won't be on your professors' CVs, but if you don't have lots of papers to your name, why not include a "Research Experience" section? Write out the titles or topics of projects that you worked on in any capacity, and also include a description of what capacity that was. For example, I had some research experience listed under "Data Organization," "Research Coordinator," "Research Assistant," "Independent Research," "Research Supervisor," and "Assessment Staff," as a few suggestions. You could also have done things such as "Data Entry," "Data Analysis," "Collaborator," like I said... just get creative!
- If you have teaching experience (e.g. as a T.A.) include a section for that, and list the courses you taught and/or what your duties were.
- CVs usually have a section for honors, prizes, and funding. Things you can include in this are any awards you received after high school. Definitely include college scholarships you received, whether you were on the Dean's list, anything you can think of (as long as it's serious. In other words, stay away from "awards" received from drunk people or while drunk). I even included an award I received from the USDA for building a tobacco chopper. True story.
- Most CVs you see will not have a "work/Volunteer experience" section. That's for resumes. But, if you have any relevant work or volunteer experience, include this section! And definitely write out descriptions of your duties as a worker/volunteer.
- I made my CV more informative and longer by including a "Research Skills" section, another one you won't see on CVs of more experienced people. But, it will be a helpful section for admissions committees, who can easily look at it and see what sorts of great skills they won't need to spend time training you on. I would limit this to forms of data analysis, different assessments you can do, and other sorts of concrete, specific skills that might be relevant in grad school.
To give you a few ideas, I'll open myself to all sorts of ridicule and post my own CV. You can compare it with others and see how it's very different than that of more experienced folks, but it's great for someone with my own level of experience. Feel free to work from it and use headings, the template, anything but the content :). I took off my address and phone number, probably for no reason, because if you really wanted to stalk me, I bet you could find a way. So please don't. Thanks!
