Key Pitfalls to Avoid in Your CV for a Master or PhD in Law Application

Daria Levina

Last year, I evaluated over a 100 master of laws and PhD applications as an observer during the selection process at the EUI.

A lot of them had a number of mistakes in common.

Here are my top tips to future applicants for drafting their CVs.

‍

  • Key sections of your CV should include: 1) the header with your name, email, mobile number, and address (mobile and address are optional); 2) education; 3) experience. You can also include publications, languages, community service, extracurriculars – depending on what you have in your background.
  • EDUCATION ALWAYS COMES BEFORE WORK EXPERIENCE. ALWAYS. NO EXCEPTIONS. You are applying for an academic program/ scholarship, not a corporate job. The first thing the selection committee will care about will be your education credentials, not your jobs or internships.
  • Make your education easy to find. In a graduate study/ scholarship application, education shouldALWAYS 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. Education is what matters for this type of applications, and education is the only qualification you have that allows to compare your profile to profiles of other people. The selection committee cannot compare you and another candidate on the jobs you’ve held or your community service – they are just too different for everyone, even for people from the same country. But education is what everyone has – at least in the context of applications.
  • For 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 got an online course from Coursera, the selection committee will not think that you are an amazing applicant who studies online in their free time at a prestigious university. They will think you are 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: University Y, 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.

  • DON’T INCLUDE CAREER OBJECTIVES IN A CV YOU SUBMIT FOR AN ACADEMIC PROGRAM/ SCHOLARSHIP. DON’T.EVER. DO. THAT. The only objective you can have when applying for it is to get admission to the program/ 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 that much – which increases the chances of rejection.
  • 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 will confuse the reader.
  • Don’t give a form of a legal entity you worked for, such as ‘JSC’ (joint stock company). It clutters a 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 multiples). Same for jobs and internships.
  • Don’t indicate secondary or high school in a graduate application.
  • Don’t use tables! Especially don’t use a table inside of a table. Tables make the text hard 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 to Germany).
  • Don’t number sections of your CV. Just like the tables, the numbers draw attention away from the content.
  •  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 distortion of formatting.
  • In the header, don’t indicate the number of your driving license, your WhatsApp or Telegram number unless explicitly required. It looks unprofessional.
  • 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 your background.
  • The entire CV should be 2 pages MAX. Under no circumstancesshould your CV be more than 2 pages. If it’s longer, the selection committeewill NOT think you are a super-talented individual whose life simply doesn’tfit into 2 pages. They will think you are incapable of making strategic choicesabout information that’s relevant and that’s not.
  • If you don’t have enough information for 2 pages, make it 1page – play with formatting and phrasing. Don’t leave it at 1,5 page – it looksunprofessional and makes it appear as if you didn’t have sufficient experienceand thus underqualified.
  • Don’t title any section of your CV ‘other’ – the evaluators won’tthink ‘additional and potentially interesting information’. They will rank itas ‘unimportant’ and skip it.
  • Don’t certify or sign your CV.
  • Don’t give links to websites on your CV – especially towebsites of companies you worked for or universities you studied at. It’sunnecessary and looks unprofessional.
  • For publications, use one of the accepted internationalformatting styles, eg, OSCOLA.
  • Don’t include a photo unless explicitly required. It’suninformative, takes up space and can lead to unconscious biases.
  • Don’t call your CV a biography. It’s not.
  • The first line of your CV should be your first and secondname, slightly bigger font than the rest. Don’t use the words ‘CV’ or ‘Résumé’or anything like that.
  • Don’t include a summary on top. It’s uninformative. Main information about your qualifications should be easily scannable from the CV itself.
  • Tailor your CV to the program’s selection criteria, its purpose, and the funder’s needs (if it’s a scholarship).

‍

Good luck!