Resume/CV Writing Tips for Studying Abroad

A resume or a CV (curriculum vitae) is a summary of your academic and professional qualifications, achievements, contributions, extracurricular activities, and technical skills. Your resume casts your first impression on the admission committee and thus, must be designed very carefully and subsequently, critiqued meticulously. There are a few important points that must be kept in mind while drafting a resume, which includes the content, format, and finally, the length of the resume. A well-written resume has to clearly define your objective and purpose through its content. However, it is not a good idea to mention the objective at the start of the resume, as most applicants do. Your objective should reflect in the construction, content and flow of your resume, along with the hierarchy of your qualifications and achievements included in the document..

You must keep in mind that you are one of the few thousand applicants who will apply to that university, and thus, your resume is also one of the few thousand resumes the admission committee will go through. Naturally, the admission committee may have just a few seconds/minutes to go through your resume. So, you must ensure that the resume captures the attention of the committee member in the first few seconds itself. Also, what is most important is how you endeavour to make your resume look more impressive and comprehensive than the rest. For more information, read Common Errors in a Resume.

While preparing your resume, you must remember that a resume is not an autobiography and should not be approached in that way. You must treat your resume as a comprehensive and focused reference to your academic history, delivered responsibilities, achievements, and academic and professional skills. Finally, the font, font size, spacing, alignment, and the like, should be appropriate. More importantly, there is a standard format which an academic resume follows, which you should keep in mind.

How to Make an Impressive Academic Resume

The most important part of developing an effective and impressive resume is to realize and understand the purpose of creating this document. You need to understand that it is not an autobiography. Instead, it is a summary of your professional and academic qualifications and achievements. Read more...

Related Links

• How to Prepare Resume for MBA Application
• How to Prepare Resume for MS Application
• How to Prepare Resume for UG Application

Common Mistakes in a Resume and How to Avoid These

A resume is essentially the first look into your candidature. While it is important to keep in mind what you should include in your resume, it is essential to keep in mind the common mistakes people make while making their academic resume. Most often, students (especially the ones with work experience) upload the same resume they use for applying for a job. What they need to remember is that an academic resume is different from a professional resume/CV. As such, students must be very careful and not make these common mistakes while preparing the academic resume.

SHIKSHA Guidelines for CV

Along with the right format, the correct formatting, hygiene of the document, US/UK English, action words, and grammar, are the most important aspects of the CV/ resume that you will be submitting to the university. Even an incorrect alignment of bullets or extra line spacing can affect the whole appearance of the document. This, in turn, affects the readability of your draft. The more verbose/confusing your draft is, the less interesting it is for the ADCOM. Hence, it is important to convey all your information in a detailed yet crisp manner, which does not miss any of your essentials. To help you with this, with years of research and study abroad experience, the Shiksha Guidelines for CV have been carefully tailored, keeping in mind all these trivialities, as well as university requirements.

Also Read

• Difference between MS and MBA Resume
• How to Present Professional Experience in Resume
• Things to include in your MS Resume