One of the first steps you should take in preparing to apply to residency will be updating your Curriculum Vitae. Your CV is not a part of the application you submit to ERAS, but the information you gather on it can be easily translated into your ERAS application. You will also need a CV to provide to your advisors and letter writers, to apply for away rotations, to submit for consideration for scholarships and awards, to assist in the preparation of your MSPE, and to bring with you to residency interviews. We have created a CV template for Keck students that is preformatted and includes color coded examples showcasing how to draft impactful bullet points. This template is available for download, and designed for students to simply add their details into the document. You can find it here.
Writing your CV
Your CV should be a concise summary of relevant information about your background and accomplishments, particularly relating to your academic and work experience.
When deciding whether to include information in your CV, ask yourself whether the information you include will help you achieve the purpose for which you are submitting it, and whether it will help the person reading it understand your most outstanding accomplishments, experiences, and qualities. Use active verbs and clear, concise language. Do not include objectives, quotations, photographs, personal information (family members, marital status, place of birth, religious background, etc.), information from high school (except in highly exceptional circumstances—if you were an Olympian, for example), or information from college other than significant honors, leadership, or research experience. When in doubt, consult with your faculty advisor.
Be sure to proofread your CV very carefully. Make sure that dates are correct and your verb tenses accurately reflect whether you are currently involved in a given activity. Make sure you have addressed any errors that spellcheck has highlighted, look carefully at short words to make sure you haven’t inadvertently substituted “of” for “or” or “form” for “from.” Also, be on the lookout for homophones used in place of your intended word: principle for principal, lead for led, or role for roll, for example.
Organizing your CV
You should organize the information on your CV in a way that highlights what is most impressive about your experiences and most relevant to the position for which you are applying. Your most relevant and most recent experiences should be listed first. Education should be the first category you include, but after that the choice and order of categories can be suited to your needs. Typical categories of experiences include the following:
- Honors and Awards
- Publications and Presentations
- Research
- Leadership and Service
- Languages
- Personal Interests
Designing your CV
People reviewing CVs often have very little time to devote to each document, so it is very important that you make yours very easy to read, and that the organization of your information is very clear. The way that you design your CV greatly influences its readability. Keep four basic principles of graphic design in mind as you lay out the information on your page: Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, and Contrast.
- Proximity: Items relating to each other should be grouped close together. When several items are in close proximity to each other, they become one visual unit rather than separate units. This helps organize information, reduces clutter, and gives the reader a clear structure. Items that are not related to one another should be farther apart.
- Alignment: Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily. Every element should have some visual connection with another element on the page. This creates a clean, sophisticated, fresh look.
- Repetition: Repeat visual elements of the design throughout the piece. You can repeat spatial relationships, line thicknesses, fonts, sizes, etc. This develops the organization and strengthens the unity.
- Contrast: Avoid elements on the page that are merely similar. If the elements (type, size, line thickness, shape, space, etc.) are not the same, then make them very different. Contrast is often the most important visual attraction on a page—it’s what makes a reader look at the page in the first place. On your CV, your most powerful tool for creating contrast will be font selection. Choose a serif font for your body text and a sans serif for your headings.