PhD CV/Resume Guide

For most PhD applications, your CV is not an administrative formality. It is a compressed evidence file.

Admissions readers use it to scan for the signals that support or weaken the rest of your application: research experience, writing, technical skills, teaching, presentations, awards, and the overall seriousness of your academic trajectory.

That means a good PhD CV is not just a longer version of a job resume. It is a document designed to help academic readers quickly understand what you have done that points toward research readiness.

If you want the full context for where the CV fits, use the Complete Guide to PhD Application Success 2026. If your CV is the next bottleneck in your process, this guide will help you fix it.

CV or Resume: Which Term Should You Use?

In doctoral admissions, “CV” is often the better default, especially in academic and research-heavy contexts. Many departments still use “resume/CV” interchangeably in their instructions. UCLA admissions pages for graduate applicants often ask for a “resume/CV.” Harvard HILS preview guidance describes the document in terms that are unmistakably CV-like: relevant education, research experience, teaching, presentations, publications, honors, scholarships, fellowships, and leadership or outreach.

The deeper point is not the label. It is the function. Your document should foreground scholarly evidence.

What Admissions Committees Actually Need From the CV

Your CV should help a reader answer these questions quickly:

• What is this applicant’s academic background?
• What research have they actually done?
• What methods or technical skills do they have?
• Have they written, presented, taught, or published?
• What evidence suggests they can thrive in research training?

A strong CV makes those answers easy to find.

The Core Sections Most PhD CVs Need

The exact order can vary by field, but this sequence is strong for many applicants.

1. Name and contact information

Include:

• full name
• email
• phone if relevant
• city/country
• professional website, ORCID, Google Scholar, or LinkedIn only if they help

Do not clutter this space with decorative elements or personal details irrelevant to admissions.

2. Education

List:

• degree
• institution
• expected or awarded date
• major or field
• thesis title if relevant
• GPA only if it helps and is appropriate

If your program or country context makes ranking, distinction, or class standing meaningful, you may include it briefly.

3. Research experience

This is often the most important section.

For each role, include:

• position title
• institution or lab
• dates
• supervisor if useful
• 2 to 4 bullets showing what you actually did

Good bullets show:

• research question or topic
• methods or tools used
• outputs or outcomes
• scope of responsibility

Weak bullet:

• Assisted with research projects.

Better bullet:

• Conducted literature coding and interview transcription for a project on first-generation graduate student persistence, then helped synthesize themes for a manuscript draft.

4. Publications and manuscripts

If you have them, give them their own section.

Differentiate clearly between:

• published
• accepted/in press
• under review
• preprints

Never blur these categories.

5. Presentations

Conference talks, posters, invited talks, research symposia, and thesis presentations can all belong here if relevant.

List them consistently and honestly. In some fields, one strong poster or lab presentation is more meaningful than applicants think because it demonstrates active engagement with research communication.

6. Teaching or mentoring

If you have been a teaching assistant, tutor, laboratory demonstrator, peer mentor, or workshop leader, include it when relevant. Teaching experience is not the center of every PhD application, but it can strengthen the overall scholarly profile.

7. Technical or methodological skills

This section should be specific.

Good:

• R, Stata, Python
• semi-structured interviewing
• archival document analysis
• cell culture, Western blotting, fluorescence imaging

Weak:

• research
• leadership
• communication

Soft skills should show up indirectly through your experience, not as isolated buzzwords.

8. Awards, honors, scholarships, and fellowships

These help signal external validation, especially when tied to research or academic excellence.

9. Service, leadership, and outreach

Include this when it is relevant and not padding. It can help when it shows intellectual community engagement, mentoring, or substantive leadership.

What to Emphasize by Field

Laboratory sciences and engineering

Put heavy emphasis on:

• research roles
• methods and instruments
• publications or manuscripts
• presentations
• technical skills

Social sciences

Emphasize:

• research experience
• methods
• datasets or fieldwork
• thesis work
• conference presentations
• writing or policy research where relevant

Humanities

Emphasize:

• thesis or major writing projects
• archival or language preparation
• conference papers
• publications if any
• teaching, reading groups, editorial work, or scholarly service when relevant

What to Leave Out

A PhD CV gets weaker when it looks like a general employment file instead of an academic record.

Usually cut or minimize:

• unrelated short-term jobs with no clear relevance
• vague objective statements
• generic “references available upon request”
• lists of soft skills
• inflated descriptions of routine tasks

If you include non-academic work, explain it in a way that shows why it belongs. Sometimes professional work is highly relevant; sometimes it is better handled briefly.

How Long Should the CV Be?

There is no universal page rule, but the better rule is this: as long as needed to show relevant evidence, and no longer.

A short, focused two-page CV can be strong. A three- or four-page CV can also be strong if the content warrants it. Length becomes a problem when it reflects repetition, filler, or poor prioritization.

Strong vs Weak Bullet Examples

Weak

• Helped professor with data.

Better

• Cleaned and coded survey responses from 480 participants for a project on graduate student belonging and created initial descriptive summaries in R.

Weak

• Worked in biology lab.

Better

• Supported protein-expression experiments by maintaining cell lines, preparing reagents, and documenting assay conditions for reproducibility across weekly runs.

Weak

• Presented research.

Better

• Presented a poster on housing precarity and municipal service access at the 2025 Undergraduate Research Conference, summarizing mixed-methods findings from thesis fieldwork.

How the CV Should Support the SOP

Your CV and statement of purpose should not duplicate each other, but they should reinforce the same case.

The CV supplies evidence. The SOP interprets it.

For example:

• the CV lists your thesis, methods, and outputs
• the SOP explains how that work shaped your research ambitions

If the two documents seem to describe different applicants, revise one or both. Pair this guide with PhD statement of purpose examples.

How the CV Helps Recommenders

Your recommenders often rely on your CV when writing letters, especially if some of your work with them happened months or years earlier. That means a well-built CV does double duty:

• it helps admissions readers
• it helps recommenders write more specific letters

Use it alongside the PhD recommendation letter strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I include GPA?

Include it if it helps and if it is customary or requested. If it is weak relative to the rest of your profile, you may not need to foreground it unless required.

Should I list manuscripts that are not published?

Yes, but label them honestly as under review, in preparation, or preprint as applicable.

Do I need a summary paragraph at the top?

Usually no. In PhD applications, the statement of purpose does the interpretive work that a corporate summary often tries to do.

Should I include unrelated work experience?

Only if it is meaningfully relevant or helps explain your trajectory. Otherwise keep it brief or omit it.

Can I use the same CV for every program?

You can use a shared master, but tailoring section order or emphasis for certain programs can still help.

Conclusion

The best PhD CVs are not flashy. They are legible, evidence-rich, and honest about what the applicant has actually done.

If an admissions reader spends thirty seconds on your CV, they should already understand your academic background, your research preparation, and why the rest of your application deserves serious attention.

Related Reading

• Complete Guide to PhD Application Success 2026
• PhD statement of purpose examples
• PhD recommendation letter strategy
• How to contact potential PhD advisors

Sources & Further Reading

• UCLA HILS Preview Weekend guidance quoted in Harvard applicant materials: HILS Virtual Preview Weekend
• UCLA Neuroscience: Admissions
• UCLA Materials Science and Engineering: Graduate Admissions
• UCLA Career Preparation Toolkit: Graduate Student and Postdoc Career Preparation Toolkit