Academic CVs for applications, not for job boards
An admissions committee reads your CV differently from a recruiter. They are verifying: does the record in the statement exist, and is it at the level claimed? A CV that buries the thesis under a summer internship makes that verification harder, and readers who cannot verify quickly assume less.
Reviewed
Order by what is being assessed
For a research programme, education and research experience come first, then publications and presentations, then technical skills, then teaching, then everything else. For a taught master's with a professional slant the working order changes, and relevant employment can outrank an undergraduate project.
The ordering is a claim about what matters in your file. Getting it wrong costs you nothing visible and quite a lot in practice.
- Education with thesis title, supervisor and grade in the local scale plus an explanation of that scale
- Research experience described by contribution, not by job title
- Publications and preprints in your field's citation style, with your name emphasised
- Technical skills split into methods and tools, no self-rated star bars
- Funding, awards and competitive selections, with the size of the field where it helps
Grades, scales and honest conversion
A 7.8 CGPA on a 10-point Indian scale, a 2:1 from a UK university and a 3.4 GPA are not interchangeable, and converting them yourself invites the reader to check your arithmetic. We state the grade in its native scale with the scale's maximum and, where the university publishes one, the class or division. No invented conversions.
Right for
Master's and PhD applicants whose CV was written for a job search and reads like one.
Wrong for
Industry job applications. Those want a résumé optimised for recruiters and applicant tracking systems, which is a different document with different rules.
Questions about this service
How long should an academic CV be?
Two pages for master's applicants, and as long as the record requires for PhD applicants with publications. The one-page rule comes from industry recruiting and does not apply here. What does apply is that page three onwards had better be publications rather than padding.
Should I include a photo, date of birth or marital status?
For US, UK, Canadian, Australian and Irish applications, no. Several German and continental European institutions still expect a photo and date of birth on a Lebenslauf. We follow the convention of the country you are applying to, and say which convention we used.