How to Write a CV for a PhD Application (with free template!)

When you’re faced with writing an academic CV for a PhD application it can be hard to know where to start.

After all, along with your personal statement an academic CV is the heart of your PhD application: essentially acting as a “highlights reel” of your greatest achievements. You need it to be well formatted and engaging, yet concise enough that all of your most relevant experience is unmissable at a glance.

Quite a challenge!

In this post we’ll break down what to include. From the essentials to the nice-to-haves. All quotes are from the CVs I personally used when applying for PhDs.

If you’re just getting started be sure to download my Academic CV Template.

In addition, if you’d like to get some inspiration from active researchers’ CVs, you may wish to check out the repository of example academic CVs I have put together here:

• Academic CV Examples From Active Researchers

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What Should I Include on an Academic CV for a PhD Application?

Contact Info

Name, email address and phone number. Personally I don’t see a need to include your address and certainly not a photo.

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Education / Qualifications

List all major grades from aged 16 upwards: GCSE, A-Levels and university degrees.

1. Undergraduate (and masters degrees) should include the subject, university and grade. I’ve tended to include the title of any significant research projects and the titles of the most relevant modules.
2. For A-Levels you should name each of the subjects you took with the grade. Personally to keep the page more clean I’ve not included the schools I went to: though it may be worth drawing attention if you did well despite attending a particularly poorly performing school.
3. GCSEs can just be summarised to the grades. Subjects needn’t be named.

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Profile

My aim is to apply my skills to improve lives. I have a proven track record of overseeing successful development of innovative medical devices and now desire the opportunity to expand my skills beyond mechanical engineering into biomaterials research.

Sometimes it can be useful to include a few lines about your motivation and aims for your career. Despite currently having a short profile on my own CV I’m not 100% convinced by them: they can sound cliché especially if you’re fresh out of undergraduate . Profiles are most common in industry and it is up to you whether you think you have content worth sharing: do not waffle, and avoid excessive use of the typical buzzwords: hardworking, motivated etc!

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University Research Projects

Third year project “3-D printing of multi-scale porous bioscaffolds for ligament attachment”

Manufactured novel magnesium calcium phosphate scaffolds to investigate 3-D printing parameters for optimum implant integration

Analysed parts under SEM to verify multi-scale porosity and XRD for detecting phase changes and composition

Conducted a statistical analysis of variance study in sample porosity using optical microscopy and deduced the optimum printing parameters to maximise porosity

Wrote a technical report and presented results during an oral presentation and viva

More than likely the research projects you’ve undertaken during the latter years of your degree will be your most substantial research experience. State the title of the project followed by a few bullet points covering:

• Useful skills and experience you gained such as: experimental & analytical techniques; software; instrumentation; report-writing; presenting
• Any substantial outcomes: prizes; publications & patents

Feel free to also state whether these projects were undertaken as a group or individually but remember to avoid clutter: you can go into more detail for your personal statement.

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[Work] Experience

Jan – May 2013 Research Assistant, Department of Haematology, University of Cambridge

Developed prototype HIV diagnostic devices for commercialisation within a multi-disciplinary team:
Debugged, calibrated and optimised several novel medical devices
Produced standard operating procedure and calibration documentation
Experienced an audit and developed an appreciation of ISO 13485 and FDA requirements

Inspected and tested parts for quality control processing

Whether you include this section will depend on what experience you have outside of the typical university projects. Here you can describe any additional work experience you have had such as: summer internships; research job roles; years in industry plus any potential outreach you’ve taken part in or voluntary work.

The level of detail you go in to will depend on how relevant the work was and how long ago: working in a shop at weekends when you were 17 probably isn’t particularly relevant. Unless you have had a significant amount of relevant (or impressive) work experience I’d keeping this section below University Research Projects.

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Interests

A keen photographer, my photographs have appeared in the international press and have raised over £5000 for Macmillan Cancer Support.

University of Warwick Photographic Society Executive Committee (2010-2012)
Positions held: President, Treasurer, First Aider and Equal Opportunities Officer

Duties included overseeing the 270 member-strong society’s running and progression – leading to a doubling of active membership over two years, chairing meetings and international trips, implementing new payment methods and securing funding.

Unless extremely relevant or impressive, I tend to not put too much emphasis on extra-curricular activities: no admissions tutor really needs to know that you enjoy cooking or cycling unless to a very high level. Having said that, do be sure to include anything which can show useful transferable skills such as team-work and responsibility.

I like to include any roles of responsibility such as society committee positions with any useful outcomes.

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Nice-To-Haves

There are number of other sections which are common among academics further up the ladder. Unless you have more than a couple of pieces of content per category I suggest adding them where relevant elsewhere: for example an undergraduate award could feature under Education. If you have enough relevant content to warrant adding a new section, they can look very impressive.

Publications

It is often said that publications are the currency of academia. If you have managed to get involved with any publications then display them here in your favourite citation style.

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Outreach

If you’ve been involved in a significant amount of scientific outreach: STEMNET; teaching; mentoring; schools events; unpaid tutoring; public events etc.

Other sections sometimes included, and which are pretty self explanatory:

• Awards & Prizes
• Professional Memberships
• Grants/Scholarships

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Tips for Writing a CV for a PhD Application

Translate Your Skills

Beyond any subject-specific skills that you know will be useful, translate how your previous experience can transfer to your PhD.  Think about things such as:

• Independence
• Problem-solving
• Leadership
• Teamwork

Ask yourself: how did your work standout? Use specifics to quantify performance rather than sticking to buzzwords. For example imagine if you’re writing as your role as president of a society:

“Leadership and teamwork experience”

versus:

“Overseeing the 270 member-strong society’s running and progression: leading to a doubling of active membership over two years”

Now you don’t need to go to that level of detail for everything, but if you’ve put in the work, make sure you do yourself justice.

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Keep Things Concise

Make sure things are understandable but avoid long-winded sentences and especially paragraphs creating big blocks of dense text. Not only are big paragraphs off-putting to read, they make it really difficult for the reader to tease out the crucial information.

Bullet points are faster and easier to read, plus easier on the eye: all things you want to be encouraging! If you can’t succinctly describe a role in a few one line bullet points you’re probably adding too much information.

Don’t forget you can go in to more detail in your personal statement. Don’t waffle on your CV for a PhD application.

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Well-Formatted

• Leaving lots of white space around your text keep it easier to read and therefore more likely that someone will continue to read it.
• In Word, zoom out so that you can see the pages of your document at once. If possible format sections so that nothing, and especially sentences, trails between pages: it makes the document look clean and professional. You can accurately play with line spacing by adding blank lines and setting the font size to something small: in my template I use size 3.
• Lead the eye. Make key information bold for it to stand out: though keep it consistent and don’t go too crazy!
• Try and keep your most important information to two pages. Anything beyond that should be supplementary.

If you’d like some guidance with formatting be sure to click HERE for my downloadable Academic CV Template.

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Spelling & Grammar

Nothing can more quickly make you appear incompetent than spelling mistakes, especially near to the top of your CV or in section headings. Once you’ve double checked your spelling take a break and come back to the document with fresh eyes: it’s amazing what you’ll spot. After that, ask a friend to have a read through too.

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Save as PDF (if allowed)

Now that you’ve formatted your CV nicely, I suggest saving it as a PDF if the online submission allows. With PDFs the formatting is locked in place and you needn’t worry about the formatting screwing up because of differing versions of Word.

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Take Inspiration

Often senior academics will include links to download their CVs from their personal webpages and I keep a folder of them for some inspiration. You can check out my online respository below!

• Academic CV Examples From Active Researchers

If you’d like personalised help with your PhD application I offer a small number of one-to-one coaching sessions. You can find further details on these here.

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I hope this post has helped with writing your own CV for a PhD application. If you have any tips or advice to share then I’d love to hear them in the comments! You can also subscribe for more content here: