CV vs. Resume

[meow]

Hi guys, hoping to get some advice and insight here.  I have a Bachelor's + a few years of work experience, now applying to PhD programs.

I've noticed that schools ask for CVs/Resumes.  Two questions here:

1) How are regular job application resumes different from PhD application CVs/resumes?  Do I need to keep with the 1 page rule?

2) What is the level of detail/depth that needs go into CVs/resumes for PhD applications?

3) Are CVs recommended or resumes?  Granted, I don't have enough publications etc. to write a CV... but still wondering.

Apologies in advance if this has been discussed in an earlier thread.  Thanks!

[rising_star]

1) Google is your friend here. A resume focuses on your work experience. A CV focuses on your research experience. That's a coarse summary but really, there's lots of info both here and on the internet about the differences between a CV and resume. If you are confused about the format, look up the CVs of grad students and faculty in your field. You'll notice that most are more than 1 pg. That said, many applicants don't have CVs of over a page simply because they don't have lots of publications or presentations to include.

2) What do you mean by level of depth? My CV offers very little description of any of the projects I've worked on because the outcomes for most are evident from publications/presentations. I don't list job duties underneath positions like "Graduate Teaching Assistant" or "Research Assistant", if that's what you're asking. Though my sense from TakeruK and Eigen is that this is different in the sciences than it is in the social sciences.

3) CVs are the convention for academics. Again, google. There's a bunch of advice about what a CV should look like when you're applying to grad school and don't have a bunch of publications, for example.

[TakeruK]

Just to expand on rising_star's post, I think it's sometimes appropriate to list additional details under your research experience to explain your duties. I did this when applying to grad school and I think it's the norm for undergrads to do this in applications to grad school. I think it's important at this level because you want to be clear what your responsibilities and contributions to the lab were. "Undergrad research assistant" can mean a wide range of things, from cleaning beakers and pipettes to running experiments under supervision to doing your own analysis etc. 

However, I don't see very many example postdoc application CVs going into a lot of detail here. Most postdocs/senior grad students in my field seem to still put one line that summarizes their research goal for that project but not as much detail as before. 

Finally, with a CV I think you would arrange the order of the sections differently. In academic grad school application CV, I would put the education, awards and research sections up front and only include non-academic jobs if they are relevant (i.e. I left out all of my random summer jobs in college to pay for school). In a resume for a job application, I put my work experiences up front and academic awards were usually left out. 

[fuzzylogician]

In the "google is your friend" spirit, I would suggest visiting the "people" pages of the departments you are planning to apply for. Specifically, look for the graduate students, and see if you can identify some who are 1-2 years. At least some will have websites, and those who have websites tend to have CVs posted on them as well. That should give you a good idea of what information the CVs of beginning students in your field tend to contain, how they are formatted, and more importantly, what the profiles of those who've successfully gotten into the schools you're interested in look like.