CV Writing Guide

What is a CV?

A Curriculum Vitae (CV) is a complete and concise history of your educational background, achievements, work, and other relevant experiences and accomplishments. It tends to be longer than a resume, which is tailored for a specific job. You will use your CV to apply for scholarships and away rotations, and it will outline your experiences for your residency application. 

How to Begin

Begin your draft CV by listing all experiences from undergrad through today

• This should include: honors, awards, work (medical or non-medical), research, community service/ volunteer experience, teaching/ mentorship involvements, publications, presentations, & other extracurricular activities
• Be sure to include details of what you did between your undergraduate degree and medical school
  • Do not include information from high school
• From there, cut down the list to include only the most relevant/ noteworthy experiences
  • Related to medicine, your interests, your specialty choice, and/or your career goals

Categorizing Your Experiences

Each section should be listed in reverse chronological order (most recent experiences should appear first). There are certain sections that every medical student’s CV should contain. Those include: 

Name and Contact Information

• You should use one font throughout the document, but it is advised that you use caps, bold, and/or a larger font size for your name
• Use your full name as it appears on your medical school documents. Avoid nicknames.
• Include your address, cell phone number and email address
• Be sure to set up a professional voicemail message

Education

• List all colleges/universities from which you've received a degree, listing the most recent first. 
  • Do not include your high school. 
• Include name, location of institution, degree/ certificate, date of completion (or expected completion) and major/minor field of study.
• Include graduating with honors here if you do not have an Honors section.
• GPA is not necessary. You may want to include Latin honors
• You may include the title of any thesis or dissertation, or a study abroad experience in this section, if you feel it is relevant to your application/ career goals

Honors & Awards

• Include awards and/or scholarships received during medical school (election to AOA, biochemistry prize, etc.)
  • You may include medical school Honors grades during your 3rd year clerkships (typically only included for your letter of recommendation writer).
• Include only the most important awards and merit-based scholarships from undergraduate or other programs.
• Include description of award if not obvious.
• Do not include financially based scholarships.
• If you have numerous items, you may want to separate them into subsections: i.e. undergraduate and medical school.

Licensure / Certifications

• List current licenses and health-related certifications
• List USMLE results
  • Pass, (score—optional), Month, Year

Experience Sections

This portion of the CV will vary for each student. You should categorize like experiences with sub-sections such as “Leadership Experience” or “Volunteer Experience”.  

• Each experience entry should contain:
  • Your position title, name of the organization/institution, location (City, State/ Country), and Dates of involvement
  • A brief description of your major responsibilities and achievements in a bullet point format using action words
    • use present tense for ongoing experiences, and past tense for everything else
• This should include paid and unpaid experiences, but should not include curricular components (such as HAP/LCCP)
• Examples of Experience Sub-Sections:
  • Research Experience
  • Publications and Presentations
    • If included, this should follow “Research Experience”
    • Publications and Presentations should be listed as AMA Citations
  • Community Service / Community Involvement
  • Volunteer Experience
  • Teaching & Mentorship Experience
  • Professional Organizations
  • Interests
    • If included, this should be a short list of items
    • You may also include language skills in this section

AMA Style for Publications & Presentations

Publications

AuthorLastname FirstInitialMiddleInitial. Title in sentence case. Abbreviated Journal Title in Title Case Year;volume(Issue#):PP-PP. doi: ##

• Click here to search for the appropriate journal title abbreviations

Example:

Hisama A, Mattson RH, Student JD, Felice K, Petroff OA. GABA and the ornithine delta-aminotransferase gene in vigabatrin-associated visual field defects. J Med Stuff 2001;10(7):505-507.

AuthorLastname FirstInitialMiddleInitial. Title in sentence case. Description of presentation context; date; City, State (Or Province/ Country).

Example:

Poe J, Kowitz K. CTF18 Plays important roles in female mouse germ cell development and ovarian folliculogenesis. Poster presented at: Drexel University College of Medicine Discovery Day; Oct 2018; Philadelphia, PA.

For additional guidance, please refer to the Purdue AMA Citation Help guide. 

Additional Resources

• List of strong active verbs to use for descriptions in experience sections
• Sample CV