What goes on the CV?

[unicornsarereal]

All of a sudden I'm second guessing everything including the CV. So far I've got my degrees, gpas, conferences, work experience, miscellaneous stuff. I'm wondering if you're supposed to put down all the relevant courses you've taken as well??

[Quantitative_Psychology]

CV's definitely can be both field dependent and career stage dependent. For example, a graduate student could talk about relevant courses and research projects that have not resulted in a publication, whereas an individual with a Ph.D. is more limited in what he or she can put on a CV. Similarly, in STEM and research fields, it is appropriate to put your technical skills (e.g., stats, programs, l assays, etc.), whereas the skills wouldn't be appropriate on the CV for an individual in the humanities.

It sounds like you have the right categories, and you are welcome to put relevant courses on. It is really a matter of personal preference. 

[TakeruK]

Look up a CV for a senior grad student in your field. I'm in a different field, but my CV when I was applying had:

Education (list year, school name, degree name and thesis advisor/title if you had a thesis; no GPA)

Awards (research fellowship awards, not academic awards)

Research experience

Publications and presentations

Service/Leadership

Other work experience (only had this on my grad app CV, I no longer have this section)

---

I wouldn't put GPA and courses since they can be found in your transcript, unless you were specifically instructed to do so.

[fuzzylogician]

1 hour ago, unicornsarereal said:

All of a sudden I'm second guessing everything including the CV. So far I've got my degrees, gpas, conferences, work experience, miscellaneous stuff. I'm wondering if you're supposed to put down all the relevant courses you've taken as well??

The CV is a living beast, and can change depending on the particular goal you're submitting it for. In the case of grad school applications, if you're submitting a transcript and your courses had descriptive names ("Advanced Pixie Dust Magic" rather than "Special Topics II"), then adding this information on your CV is most likely redundant. If it's adding something new that you think is useful, or if a school explicitly asks for it, you could have a short section on relevant coursework; it can't hurt, though it probably won't help much, either. I'd put it at the very end of the CV, and include the following: title, instructor, semester/year taken, content (in one sentence), textbook (if any). Basically 2-3 lines per course, no more, and formatted in a way that makes it easy to match up with your transcript. Once you're in grad school, this section should probably be removed from the CV. Alternatively, another way to handle uninformative course names is to simply mention the relevant ones in your SOP and discuss what you learned, if that's relevant and helpful in advancing your narrative, or asking a LOR writer to discuss them.

Otherwise, you got good advice above: look at CVs of students in your field for clues. I'd suggest looking at junior students' CVs in addition to more advanced ones, because they will likely have similar information to convey to yours, and more advanced students may already have other goals in mind for their CVs. 

[unicornsarereal]

Thanks so much @fuzzylogician and @TakeruK!

[Sandmaster]

I just finished mine for my applications about a week ago.

I had Education, Research Interest, Research Experience, Professional Experience, University Service, Professional Associations, Awards/Honors, and Community Involvement (I would have another section for conference work and another for publication if I had any, but unfortunately not yet).

Also, I made sure to tailor my CV to only include things that were relevant to what I was applying to (so I did not list all of my work experience, etc). I made sure it was all relevant and decently current (oldest mention was August 2013) even if I had other experiences from way back in undergraduate and before.

Edited November 17, 2017 by Sandmaster

[TakeruK]

2 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

I'd suggest looking at junior students' CVs in addition to more advanced ones, because they will likely have similar information to convey to yours, and more advanced students may already have other goals in mind for their CVs. 

Good point. I only said "senior students" because I'm noticing more and more students in my field don't create research websites and online CVs until their 3rd year (first two years are too busy with quals and/or coursework). But probably was not a good idea to generalize this to everywhere!