A CV - A Curriculum Vita - didn't take 8 years of Latin for nothing (see note 1) is basically an academic resume. It's a short document that describes your academic qualifications. It's important to have a CV when you apply for a graduate program (or any professional school). Importantly, a CV is not a resume (the thing that you use to apply for a job), but it's pretty similar. And the critical point is that if you want to apply to graduate school, you have to write one.
What I'm not going to do in this post it tell you how to write a CV (or the difference between a CV and a resumes). There are a few good resources (mostly that I've poached from other universities) here:
https://magoosh.com/grad-admissions/how-to-write-a-cv-for-grad-school/
Brown, by the way, has a service about reviewing resumes. I'm not sure they also do CVs. But worth the ask.
Here's what this post is about: the stuff that's not on these links.
A big difference between CVs and resumes is that CVs should be in a more standard form. I often see students design a resume with lots of visual elements - bigger fonts in places, vertical layouts, lines and segments, colors. No. No NO NO NO NO. Leaving aside that this is not professional, there's a broader concept at play here. What's important is for you to put yourself in the mindset of who is going to be reading your CV. What are they expecting? What resonates with them?
Yeah, beats me.
But here's what resonates with me.
1) I write. Kind of a lot. And I write in a particular style. it's the style of the American Psychological Association (APA), which is the style that I have to use when I submit a manuscript to a journal. And when you do this long enough, you buy the APA Style guide (i.e., the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association). It's a book. It talks about all the things that you need to know about publishing, how to prepare a manuscript, ethics, writing, and a lot of other stuff (it's pretty useful, and should be a required reading for graduate school). And I've been doing this a while now, so much so that when I see something that isn't in APA style, it looks wrong to me.
So, here's the thing. Maybe the person reading your CV won't care. But maybe they will. And I suspect that there's a lot more people who read CVs who are like me in this way (even if they are unaware of it and have never thought about it) than people not like me, who don't care about the format of a manuscript.
Put another way, I can be pretty stuck up. I'm a professor. A lot of professors have sticks up their you-know-where. Have you met us?
So, what's the secret sauce. OK. Here goes:
1" margins on all sides. No more. No less.
12pt Times New Roman Font. (yes, the Times on a Mac is fine). Don't screw around with this.
Single spacing - use a space to indicate a break in the document, not lines or segments or changing the orientation of the document.
If you have publication(s) or presentation(s), make sure they are in APA style, up to and including the formatting (this website helps with this).
OK, so, that means a few things:
Don't use LaTeX (or a similar program). If you don't know what that is, don't worry about it, and just stick to Word. If you know, just DON'T USE IT.
Don't try to futz with the Font size to try to make something fit. Again, think about your audience. Professors reading your applications are usually older. Starting around age 40, your vision, particularly your ability to read small print begins to deteriorate. I'm older than 40, and my eyesight isn't what it used to be. I can't read 10-11 point fonts as well anymore. If you want maximal readability, make it readable. Don't make it too small.
A long long time ago - like college for me - I worked on my college's newspaper and edited a features magazine. What I loved about it more than anything else was the layout. I wasn't great at it, but I learned a lot of elements of graphic design (I still have some of the books in my office here at Brown). (That said, my closet friend became a graphic designer and he smoked what I could do, making me realize that dabbling with it in college is not the same as what professionals do). So, all those design elements are fun, and fun to think about, and fun to play with. And photoshop and illustrator can be interesting, particularly if you've played around with them. But resist the temptation. Don't eat the marshmallow. Just write the damn thing in Word. Center your name and some personal information at the top, and then present a list of information.
2) A CV summarizes your academic experiences. A good standard at the start of your career is 1 page per 20 years of life, rounding up (so, if you're over 20, then 2 pages). Don't worry, that ratio changes as you get older (mine is now 16 pages - but I'm not 318 years old, although the Latin might fool you). So, you really want to stick to 2 pages, which means leaving some things off if they aren't relevant to your academic experiences. For example, I'm a Lifemaster, who has won a national champion at Bridge (the card game, see note 2), but that's not on my CV. Athletics, interests, and hobbies are not part of your academic experience. But because you're leaving some of this stuff off, make sure that you add stuff that's relevant. Were you a TA? An RA? Did you win a UTRA? Did you have a summer research experience? Did you do a thesis? Did you shadow a clinician? Those (and many others) are the more relevant bits. No one cares that I can recognize and then carry out a double squeeze (see note 3).
3) Academic psychology is a small field, and we all know each other, and we definitely all talk to each other. And even if we don't know each other, it's normal for us to talk to each other about students. Mention your supervisors (the professors as well as the grad students) and what you did for your experiences. Use text to describe your position, not just what they are.
There's a broader concept here, which I think I'll refer to over a few posts, which theory of mind. Theory of mind is the understanding of others' mental and emotional states. Writing for another person, and particularly for an application, is all about theory of mind - thinking through and then clearly presenting what the audience needs to know at the point they need to know it. A CV is a good place to start, because it's also highly structured, and one should recognize, learn, and the use that structure, but this idea - putting yourself in the head of your readers - is a good principle of writing more generally, and one that I'll return to several times throughout this blog.
1 - Graduate school applications is a little like nos morituri te salutant!
2 - just in case the Latin hadn't convinced you I was a nerd. Yes, I won a national event in 2004, but I haven't played a hand of tournament bridge in about 15 years. The Lifemaster title, however, never expires.
3 - Yeah, don't ask. For, well, reasons, all bridge terms tend to be a little racy. I have theories as to why, but that's another post.