Updating my CV

[mcfc2018]

Hi, sorry if this has been asked on the forum before, but I'm updating my CV for grad school (neuroscience) applications and was wondering what I should be putting on it. Namely:

1. My current CV was made when I was a college freshman and as such contains a lot of my high school stuff. This includes: Summer research program, teaching experience, and certain extracurriculars. Should any of this be included or should I just toss out everything prior to college? Similarly, are extracurriculars worth mentioning? I include it in resumes but I don't know about CVs.

2. What's the order of headings should I go in? 

3. How much detail should I add about my research?

 

Thanks for any help

[StemCellFan]

1 hour ago, mcfc2018 said:

Hi, sorry if this has been asked on the forum before, but I'm updating my CV for grad school (neuroscience) applications and was wondering what I should be putting on it. Namely:

1. My current CV was made when I was a college freshman and as such contains a lot of my high school stuff. This includes: Summer research program, teaching experience, and certain extracurriculars. Should any of this be included or should I just toss out everything prior to college? Similarly, are extracurriculars worth mentioning? I include it in resumes but I don't know about CVs.

2. What's the order of headings should I go in? 

3. How much detail should I add about my research?

 

Thanks for any help

Hi,

To answer some of your questions:

1) I would take out anything that's not related to research or teaching.  It doesn't matter if you've done it as a high school student, if you've done research, I would definitely include it on there.  Teaching I would put under a separate section

2) Mine starts with my name, education, research experiences, bibliography/publications, presentations, teaching experiences, I have a small section on the two undergraduate grants I wrote, if you have awards (like a poster award) you can add that, and I have my relevant volunteer information last (ex. science fair judging).

3) I went into a fair amount of detail with my research.  I mentioned what my projects were or what my job duties were if I was a tech.  I didn't go into background, significance, or into the techniques I used too much when describing my research in the CV.  I saved that information for my research or personal statements.

[lmb123]

I second the advice from @StemCellFan. For each of my research experiences, I included two bullets: one describing the project in one sentence, then one describing the general approach taken (e.g. techniques used). Also, I would include publications you have in any state, under review, submitted etc. 

[BabyScientist]

I agree with StemCellFan's detailed response. 

Mine goes education, research experience, publications, abstracts, skills summary, and other experience.

Research experience was essentially each lab. I put in a sentence describing the labs overall goal, and then bullets describing techniques used.

Skills summary was a quick bulleted list of my general skills (ie histology, microscopy, data analysis with certain software, etc) 

Other experience was anything I did that I thought had any relevance. That included volunteering at a homeless shelter and working a customer service job (being able to handle people is always important). 

 

[mcfc2018]

Awesome. Thanks for all of your help.

[dopamine_machine]

On 8/21/2018 at 3:48 PM, BabyScientist said:

I agree with StemCellFan's detailed response. 

Mine goes education, research experience, publications, abstracts, skills summary, and other experience.

Research experience was essentially each lab. I put in a sentence describing the labs overall goal, and then bullets describing techniques used.

Skills summary was a quick bulleted list of my general skills (ie histology, microscopy, data analysis with certain software, etc) 

Other experience was anything I did that I thought had any relevance. That included volunteering at a homeless shelter and working a customer service job (being able to handle people is always important). 

 

I know that this topic is super old, but I figured that my question didn't require an entirely new topic.  If I did volunteer work in a hospital/helped found a non profit, do you think that would be a positive or negative thing to include for a biology PhD program application? I don't want to give the impression that I'm pre-med, but I am super interested in the capacity of my future research for drug development (my hospital experience showed me that I like translational research, especially since I'm into stem cell modeling in neurological conditions).  Also, while the nonprofit I held a leadership role in wasn't actively involved in research, it was a public health initiative to limit the spread of preventable diseases, thereby kind of playing to the same tune as both share the common goal of reducing disease symptomology.

I hope that my CV shows that I like research (I will have worked in the same lab for 3 years when applying; 3 current WIP/soon to be submitted publications), but am interested in human applications

[dippedincoffee]

On 4/23/2020 at 10:53 AM, dopamine_machine said:

I know that this topic is super old, but I figured that my question didn't require an entirely new topic.  If I did volunteer work in a hospital/helped found a non profit, do you think that would be a positive or negative thing to include for a biology PhD program application? I don't want to give the impression that I'm pre-med, but I am super interested in the capacity of my future research for drug development (my hospital experience showed me that I like translational research, especially since I'm into stem cell modeling in neurological conditions).  Also, while the nonprofit I held a leadership role in wasn't actively involved in research, it was a public health initiative to limit the spread of preventable diseases, thereby kind of playing to the same tune as both share the common goal of reducing disease symptomology.

I hope that my CV shows that I like research (I will have worked in the same lab for 3 years when applying; 3 current WIP/soon to be submitted publications), but am interested in human applications

I would definitely add in your volunteer work. I'm in a very different field from you, but still Biology, and have a section for it on the last page of my CV. Some PIs apparently could care less about science outreach and/or volunteering, but whatever.

[BabyScientist]

On 4/23/2020 at 1:53 PM, dopamine_machine said:

I know that this topic is super old, but I figured that my question didn't require an entirely new topic.  If I did volunteer work in a hospital/helped found a non profit, do you think that would be a positive or negative thing to include for a biology PhD program application? I don't want to give the impression that I'm pre-med, but I am super interested in the capacity of my future research for drug development (my hospital experience showed me that I like translational research, especially since I'm into stem cell modeling in neurological conditions).  Also, while the nonprofit I held a leadership role in wasn't actively involved in research, it was a public health initiative to limit the spread of preventable diseases, thereby kind of playing to the same tune as both share the common goal of reducing disease symptomology.

I hope that my CV shows that I like research (I will have worked in the same lab for 3 years when applying; 3 current WIP/soon to be submitted publications), but am interested in human applications

I'd put it on there. Definitely won't hurt. Like dippedincoffee said, some people won't care, but some might like it. People have can have very different paths that lead them to a PhD, yours just included medically-relevant volunteer work. If you can tie those experiences in to why you want a PhD, even better. If not, no harm. We're allowed to explore careers before choosing one. 

[dopamine_machine]

56 minutes ago, BabyScientist said:

I'd put it on there. Definitely won't hurt. Like dippedincoffee said, some people won't care, but some might like it. People have can have very different paths that lead them to a PhD, yours just included medically-relevant volunteer work. If you can tie those experiences in to why you want a PhD, even better. If not, no harm. We're allowed to explore careers before choosing one. 

That's what I was hoping people would say, because I feel like working in the hospital helped me narrow down what kind of career I wanted.  Plus, I feel like it would be a waste to just discard so many of my extracurriculars when they did help bring me to the point I am at today in terms of my research goals.  Thanks everyone