How to Write a Magnificent CV: My Insights After Evaluating 100+ PhD and LLM Applications

Daria Levina

Last year, I evaluated over a 100 PhD and master of laws (LLM) applications during the EUI (European University Institute) selection process.

In this post, I talk about the most common mistakes people do in their applications and how to make your CV as competitive as possible.

Key sections to include in a CV

Key sections of your CV should include:

the header with your name, email, mobile number, and address (mobile and address are optional);

In the header, don’t indicate the number of your driving license, your WhatsApp or Telegram number unless explicitly required. It looks unprofessional.

education;
experience.

You can also include publications, languages, community service, extracurriculars – depending on what you have in your background.

Don’t title any section of your CV as ‘other’ – the evaluators won’t think about it as ‘additional and potentially interesting information’. They will rank it as ‘unimportant’ and skip it.

Don’t number the sections. The numbers draw the reader's attention away from the content.

Don’t call your CV a 'biography'. It’s not.

The first line of your CV should be your first and second name, in a slightly bigger font than the rest. Don’t use the words ‘CV’ or ‘Résumé’ or anything like that. Just your name.

Don’t include a summary on top. It’s uninformative. The key information about your qualifications should be easily scannable from the CV itself.

Education comes before experience

If I had to single out one mistake that people commit in their CVs, it's putting professional experience before education.

In a graduate application, education should come before experience. Always. Without exception.

The reasons are two-fold. First, you are not applying for a job. You are applying for academic study, and you'll be evaluated on your academic merit. Your education therefore matters the most to the selection committee.

Second, education is usually the only comparable qualification you'll have as assessed against other applications. What do I mean by that?

The selection committee can't compare you and other candidates on the jobs you’ve held, your community service, or your internships. These things will be too different, regardless of whether you share a country of origin or not. Even if you and another candidate come from the same country, you may have on your CV a corporate job and community service at an animal shelter, and another candidate may have work at a children's NGO and building a side-business in web design. It'll be impossible to compare your profiles.

On the other hand, education is what everyone has - at least in the context of graduate applications. Universities have rankings, and they award grades.

I know, it's a highly imperfect system. Your grades may have very little to do with your how smart and accomplished you are. But they allow to ensure the basic level playing field for everyone.

Education therefore is the first thing the evaluators will look for.

Make your education easy to find. In a graduate study or a scholarship application, education should always be at the very beginning of a CV, always before employment, always on the first page. It doesn’t matter that your post-education experience was more impressive, or that you’ve been out of school for a while.

Guidelines for presenting your educational qualifications

A few guidelines for presenting your education:

Don’t just state your university. It’s not enough. State the degree you received, the place, and the date.
Any non-degree education should be listed SEPARATELY (see below). You’ll be judged, first and foremost, on education that resulted in a degree.
Don’t indicate online courses in the education section. Please. Or summer schools. Or anything else of that quality. It’s misleading. If you indicate ‘University X’ as the one you got your bachelor’s from and follow it up by ‘Yale Law School’ – and the latter is where you took an online course from Coursera, the selection committee will not think of you as an amazing applicant who studies online in their free time at a prestigious university. They will think of you as a liar who misrepresents the facts and tries to take credit for something you did not do.

A way to visually separate your degree programs and other education is this:

‘University X, XX city, xxx country

[type of degree, dates]

Exchange: UniversityY, YY city, yyy country’

Alternatively, you can make an entirely different section titled something like ‘additional education’ or ‘supplementary education’ and put your online courses/ summer schools there.

Guidelines for other sections of your cV

don't include career objectives in a CV. The only objective you can have when applying for an academic program or a scholarship is to get admission to the program or get scholarship. If you include career objectives, the selection committee will think that you submitted a generic CV that you’ve previously used for a corporate job and that you didn’t put any effort in your application – which would mean that probably you don’t want it so much – which increases your chances of being rejected.
Don’t use abbreviations that are specific to your country – most people abroad won’t understand them. Give full names but simplify. For instance, don’t say ‘MSU’ – say ‘Moscow State University’. Use the same name consistently throughout the entire CV, don’t switch suddenly to abbreviations after using full name. It confuses the reader.
Don’t give a form of a legal entity that you worked for, such as ‘JSC’ (joint stock company). It clutters the CV and carries zero useful information. Just give the company’s name.
Indicate everything in REVERSE chronological order. Start with your latest degree, then a degree before that (if you have multiple). Same for jobs and internships.
Don’t indicate secondary or high school education in a graduate application unless explicitly required otherwise.
Don’t use tables! Especially don’t use a table inside a table. Tables make the text harder to read and draw attention away from the content to the table itself. The only exception is if you are explicitly asked to provide a CV in a tabular form (common for applications in Germany).
Don’t use corporate templates, especially those that have colored columns on the side. They are hard to read and steal valuable space.
Don’t use Euraxess template unless explicitly required. Its use of space is extremely inefficient.
Don’t print and scan your CV. Type your CV in Microsoft Word and the convert it to a .pdf file to avoid distorted formatting.
Don’t include your general areas of interest like ‘reading and dancing’. They are usually useless and don’t help the selection committee to make a decision about you. You can, however, include more specific extracurricular achievements, such as ‘7 years of musical school’ or ‘competitive ballroom dancer’ or anything else that applies to you.
The entire CV should be 2 pages MAX. Under no circumstances should your CV be more than 2 pages. If it’s longer, the selection committee will NOT think you are a super-talented individual whose life doesn’t fit into 2 pages. They will think you are incapable of making strategic choices about the relevance of information you are presenting.
If you don’t have enough information for 2 pages, make it 1 page – play with formatting and phrasing. Don’t leave it at 1,5 page – it looks unprofessional and makes it appear as if you didn’t have sufficient experience and are underqualified.
Don’t certify or sign your CV.
Don’t give links to websites on your CV, especially the websites of companies you worked for or the universities you studied at. It’s unnecessary and looks unprofessional.
For publications, use one of the accepted international formatting styles, eg, OSCOLA.
Don’t include a photo unless explicitly required. It’s uninformative, takes up space and can lead to unconscious biases against you.
Tailor your CV to the program’s selection criteria, its purpose, and the funder’s needs (if it’s a scholarship).

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Hope it helps and good luck!

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