Creating a Medical student Curriculum Vitae (CV)

The Curriculum Vitae (CV) is the definitive summary of your background and accomplishments. You may be asked for your CV when applying for many things, including some rotations, summer research positions, professional societies, residency positions, etc. Review it regularly to keep it current. Below you will find several links to resources that are targeted to the medical student CV.

In my experience in working with first year medical students on their CV, the most difficult challenge is to decide what to keep from the premedical CV. My mantra is that not everything that helped you get into medical school is going to help you move forward in medical school and into residency. Things that go "out of date" are most premedical academic honors (eg Dean's list) and community service. Things to definitely keep are items related to education, teaching, research, and clinical experiences. Only keep awards or other types of recognition if they are very high level or unusual, e.g. national awards, professional recognitions, etc.

It cannot be emphasized enough that your CV has to be as close to perfect as you can make it. It has to be consistent in style, format, font, and chronological presentation. It has to be clear, polished, organized, concise, error free, and accurate. It also has to be completely honest, with no fabrications, exaggerations, duplications, or other embellishments. 

Finally, I strongly recommend creating a Linkedin page (here is mine) since that is generally accepted as an online version of your CV and is an excellent way to build your professional network. Utilize a professional quality photo and make sure everything on the site is polished and error-free. Prospective residency directors, employers, etc will study your site, so make it look good and keep it current!

typical sections of a curriculum vitae

Name and contact information

Education (beyond high school)

Clinical experience (of any kind)

Other pertinent experience (e.g. piano instructor for children when applying for pediatric residency)

Leadership experience (high level of leadership in any venue, e.g. captain of college track team)

Community service- significant activities like medical mission trips, health fairs, health screening in workplaces, etc

Advocacy (esp health policy work)

Teaching experience (TA, tutor, workshop instructor, etc)

Awards, Honors, Recognitions

Research experience (concise, bulleted descriptions but sufficiently detailed for the reader to understand what you did)

Presentations (can be broken into oral and poster subsections, but that is not required)

Publications (include full citations including DOI)

Languages (only if you are multilingual). Include here EMR systems you are familiar with and name them specifically. 

Professional associations and student clubs (distinguish between them)

Certifications

Hobbies/Interests (go into a bit of detail. Instead of “running” say “participate in 5K fun runs and marathons”. 

DO NOT INCLUDE: irrelevant work experience, professional references, your photo, fancy graphics, purpose statement, listing of job skills or equipment used, test scores, social security number, birthdate, other highly personal information

basics that are often missed

Name:  Use your full, legal name at the top, with any nickname in quotation marks.

Address: Use your actual mailing address if you are going to put an address. People do still mail things sometimes, though not very often. The address is optional and many leave it off for privacy reasons. 

Email: Normally I would say to list your WCU email address as your primary email. However, the strict spam filter on the WCU email accounts now has caused some problems with receiving emails from outside the organization and you also lose your WCU email access shortly after graduation. I therefore now recommend you use a personal email address on your CV and correspondence with groups outside WCU. If you create a new email address for this purpose, carefully consider the name you generate since it will reflect on your professionalism. (Would you hire backstabber@gmail.com or lazyboy@yahoo.com?) I have personally found gmail to be a stable and reliable email provider.

Phone: List a phone number you actually use.

Web address:  If you are listing a Linkedin URL, put it at the top with the contact information. Make sure you keep your Linkedin profile updated! In fact, keep your CV up to date!

Education: Remember your degree name is Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. No variant on this name is acceptable. The same with the full name of the school, which is William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine.  Yes, all the words are important!

Dates: Put start and end date (month/yr) for anything that lasted more than a month. This includes organization memberships, research and clinical experience, etc.

Presentations: Don't mix conference presentations with other types of presentations. Have a section entitled Conference Presentations, with a full listing of all authors, title, conference name, date and place.  Have a second section for Other Presentations where you can list presentations like path parties, rotation presentations, etc. If you want to list conferences that you attended but did not give a presentation or have any other position of responsibility, that is ok but list these in a separate section that is clearly labeled as "conferences attended". If you presented the same poster in multiple venues, only list the most prominent venue.

Publications: Use a standard citation format like JAOA or JAMA, including the DOI. Do NOT just use a URL in place of a citation.

Languages: If you are reasonably fluent in any language besides English, this is a positive thing that you want to note on your CV. If you do list a language, it is important to indicate both written and spoken proficiency/fluency. If it is your native language, say that. Also list here any EMR systems with which you are proficient.

Certifications: It is optional to list certifications like BLS, PALS, etc but I encourage you to do so. Also, CITI courses are not "certifications" but are course completions and lots of outside parties including residencies want to know about them. Therefore I encourage you to have a "Certifications and Course Completions" section that lists all of your CITI course completions and the expiration date.