What to put on a CV/Resume as an undergraduate?

[gughok]

The CV is a place to list all of one's accomplishments in academia. This makes it a bit hard to put one together before having entered academia.

As an undergraduate, what sorts of things should I be including in my CV/resume? (And is there a strong reason for me to do one over the other?)

I've got my (expected) undergraduate education, all my research experience (I was in a lot of experimental fields before getting to philosophy, so no publications but plenty of research assistantship experience), teaching experience, languages, and... that's about it. The whole thing is maybe half a page.

Is there any other general sort of information I should have on my CV?

[StyLeD]

Think of the resume as the skeleton of your Cover Letter / Statement of Purpose. Once you've build up a solid foundation, all that's left is to weave it into a compelling story. Therefore, along with the categories you've listed, the resume should show real world work/internship experience, leadership experience, and extracurricular activities alongside any technical skills you have - coding, quantitative programs, Adobe Creative Suite, WordPress, etc. Depending on the purpose of the resume, consider including international experience and relevant coursework.

If you have 3-4 significant scholarships, fellowships, or similar awards, you can lump that with your GPA and stuff like "Dean's List" or "Dean's Scholarship" in a section on Honors/Distinguished Achievement. 

Undergraduates these days are expected more and more to have a balance of high GPA, demonstrated leadership potential, and real life experience in the form of work study, internships, and/or research publications depending on your career goals. If you've made substantive efforts in filling out all three categories, consider a fourth: nationally competitive scholarships/fellowships to distinguish you from your peers.

Edit: One last thing - while most job resumes are at most 2 pages, academic/award programs often ask for more to get a better sense of the applicant. In such cases, be detailed in describing your research and job activities and format your resume in a way which prioritizes the most relevant sections.

Edited November 15, 2015 by StyLeD

[fuzzylogician]

Look up some first year grad students in the programs you are targeting and look at their CVs. That should give you an idea of content, rough layout, and what would be expected of a successful applicant to those programs. When I applied, mine had education, honors and awards, publications, presentations, research experience, and teaching experience. (I had 2 presentations at ok conferences and 1 conference proceedings at the time, plus some TA experience and a few RAships). The whole thing was 1.5 pages. If you've done any service to your department or university, add that too. I don't think there is any need to add technical skills unless you have "real" experience (I don't think it matters much if you include it, but I personally find it redundant when people list Word, LaTeX or even SPSS/R as technical skills, but actual coding skills can't hurt). In some fields, languages are useful. Extracurriculars probably don't need to be there unless they are somehow relevant, but it would depend on the particular case. You don't want to seem like you're padding your CV.

[TakeruK]

In academia, there really isn't a difference between a resume and a CV. Many applications that ask for one or the other would use the terms interchangeably. Some people use the convention that a resume is a short version of a CV but that's not universal either.

You can google some grad students in your field/departments you want to apply for and see what their CV/resumes look like.

If it helps, my section headings are:

Education

Research Experience

Publications and Presentations

Awards (research fellowships)

Teaching & Outreach

Volunteer & Service

For Research Experience, for each item, I listed 2 or 3 bullet points that described the project in greater detail. Publications & Presentations and Awards are just simple lists. The last two section has 1 bullet point per item (usually the item heading was the position/organization and the single bullet point was a summary of the responsibilities).

For schools that didn't impose a length limit, with this format, my CV was between 2-3 pages. In academia, there is usually no "one page" limit, unlike what we might have learned in high school. So, there's no need for little tricks to condense all your items to fit into 1 page (e.g. making the font size of the empty lines smaller, playing with margins etc.). I took advantage of the no page limit to give all my sections good white space so they look visually appealing. 

The schools that did have length limits had a limit of 2 pages. In these cases, I didn't try to change the format too much to squeeze things in. Instead, I just removed or shortened some descriptions so that it fit (e.g. maybe only show 2 presentations instead of all N etc.)

[sidebysondheim]

Takeruk's advice I think probably best fits CV for undergrad philosophy applicants. I'd also be willing to share the CV I used for applications over a private message, though I have no clue if the amount of work I did is average or not. 

[ianfaircloud]

On 11/14/2015, 10:00:38, gughok said:

The CV is a place to list all of one's accomplishments in academia. This makes it a bit hard to put one together before having entered academia.

As an undergraduate, what sorts of things should I be including in my CV/resume? (And is there a strong reason for me to do one over the other?)

I've got my (expected) undergraduate education, all my research experience (I was in a lot of experimental fields before getting to philosophy, so no publications but plenty of research assistantship experience), teaching experience, languages, and... that's about it. The whole thing is maybe half a page.

Is there any other general sort of information I should have on my CV?

You don't have to have any publications or patents or anything crazy like that. They're looking for a concise summary of where you went to school, any academic achievements (Honors list), and perhaps some work history. But yeah, most of us didn't publish anything anywhere when we applied. And look, publishing for your undergraduate journal just isn't very important to philosophers. ANYBODY can do that, frankly. I think it's great that undergrads publish their journals. I respect it a lot. But virtually anybody can get published in an undergraduate journal.

The truth is that philosophers don't generally give a shit about any of this stuff. The problem is that these graduate schools sort of force the CV requirement. I think some philosophers will read them and care. But I just don't see them making a real difference in applications. Still, since they're there, you should do them right and well. If you won some philosophical writing award or something, that's gonna look really nice and it's going to set the tone as the reader looks through your materials.