An academic CV shows how your education, research experience and skills prepare you for a particular degree, scholarship or research role. It should make your evidence easy to assess. A strong CV can be built from an undergraduate dissertation, supervised projects, teaching and relevant work, even before you have publications.
About the examples: Aisha Pratama and Maya Lestari are fictional applicants. Their universities, projects, activities and achievements below are invented for teaching. These are not successful scholarship applications. Replace every example with your own verified information.
1. Start with the application instructions
Check whether the university or scholarship supplies a template, page limit, required headings or separate publication list. Follow those instructions first. There is no single CV format that works for every country or discipline. Keep a longer master CV for your records, then select relevant evidence for each application.
For example, Oxford’s graduate application guidance explains how to supply a CV when a course requires one. Read the relevant course page as well as the general guidance. An employment CV, an academic CV and a scholarship form may ask for different information.
2. Choose sections that support your application
- Contact and research interests: your name, professional email and a short, specific statement of interests. Add a public portfolio or researcher identifier only if you have one.
- Education: degree, institution, dates and dissertation title. Give grades with the original scale if useful or requested; do not invent an international equivalent.
- Research experience: explain the question, your contribution, methods and an actual output. Separate your work from the team’s achievements.
- Publications and presentations: include these only when applicable. Distinguish published, accepted, submitted and in-progress work. An internal seminar is not an international conference.
- Teaching, employment and service: select activities that demonstrate preparation, responsibility or communication.
- Skills and languages: describe tasks you can perform, rather than claiming expertise from one workshop.
- Awards and referees: report accurate award names and dates. Follow the application rules for referee details and ask permission before sharing them.
3. Show evidence appropriate to your field
| STEM emphasis | Humanities emphasis |
|---|---|
| Study design, laboratory or computational methods, data quality and reproducible analysis. | Research questions, archives, primary sources, languages, textual analysis and theoretical approaches. |
| Name the methods you actually used and describe your role in the project. | Name the source collection or material you examined and explain how you interpreted it. |
| Describe code, reports or datasets accurately, including access restrictions. | Describe essays, annotated bibliographies, editions or presentations accurately, including their status. |
Both fields value clear contributions, careful documentation and honest descriptions of unfinished work. Do not include confidential participant records, restricted archive material or private files as portfolio links.
4. Fictional STEM academic CV example
Aisha Pratama
Email: aisha.pratama@example.org
Research interests: health services research, appointment access and quantitative public health.
Education
2021–2025 | Bachelor of Public Health, Universitas Cakrawala Nusantara (fictional institution)
Undergraduate dissertation: Reported barriers to attending scheduled appointments at two community health centres.
Relevant coursework: epidemiology, introductory biostatistics, research methods and health policy.
Research experience
2025–2026 | Research Assistant, Department of Public Health, Universitas Cakrawala Nusantara
- Supported a supervised appointment-access study by checking questionnaire records against the study’s data dictionary.
- Maintained a log of missing values and coding queries for review by the project supervisor.
- Prepared descriptive tables in R and documented analysis steps for an internal project report.
2024–2025 | Undergraduate dissertation researcher
- Analysed questionnaire responses from 180 adults attending two community health centres, under academic supervision.
- Summarised reported travel, scheduling and information barriers using descriptive statistics.
- Discussed convenience sampling and the limits of generalising the findings in the dissertation.
Selected presentation
2025 | Undergraduate Research Seminar, Department of Public Health
Oral presentation: Describing appointment barriers using questionnaire data. Internal university seminar; not an external conference.
Peer learning and service
2025–2026 | Volunteer facilitator, student statistics practice group
Helped peers practise importing teaching datasets, checking variable types and producing descriptive summaries in R and jamovi.
Research and technical skills
- R: importing CSV files, cleaning categorical variables, descriptive summaries and basic plots.
- jamovi: setting measurement levels and producing descriptive tables.
- Research practice: questionnaire coding, missing-value logs, literature searching and reference management.
Languages
Indonesian: native language. English: experience reading academic papers and preparing coursework in English; no test score claimed.
Example notes: This early-career CV omits a publications section because the applicant has no publications to list. A dissertation and internal report are described in their actual categories. Referee contact details would be supplied only if requested and with permission.
5. Fictional humanities academic CV example
Maya Lestari
Email: maya.lestari@example.org
Research interests: social history, print culture and representations of education in Indonesian newspapers.
Education
2021–2025 | Bachelor of History, Universitas Pustaka Arunika (fictional institution)
Undergraduate dissertation: Representations of girls’ education in a selected Indonesian newspaper corpus, 1925–1935.
Relevant coursework: historiography, historical research methods, Southeast Asian history and textual analysis.
Research experience
2024–2025 | Undergraduate dissertation researcher
- Examined 60 newspaper items from a teaching archive, documenting dates, genres and provenance in a source catalogue.
- Compared editorials and reader letters through close reading, with attention to authorship, audience and historical context.
- Prepared an annotated bibliography and explained gaps in the surviving source collection.
2025–2026 | Volunteer research support, Department of History, Universitas Pustaka Arunika
- Helped organise a teaching bibliography on Indonesian education history.
- Checked citations and recorded catalogue references for materials selected by the supervising lecturer.
- Prepared short source summaries for an internal reading group; did not claim authorship of the lecturer’s research.
Selected presentation and writing
2025 | Student History Colloquium, Department of History
Presentation: Reading newspaper debates about girls’ education. Internal student event.
2025 | Undergraduate dissertation
Completed degree requirement; unpublished. Not a peer-reviewed journal article.
Teaching and academic service
2025–2026 | Volunteer peer tutor, historical writing group
Supported students in structuring source-based essays, distinguishing quotation from paraphrase and checking references.
Research skills
- Primary-source criticism: provenance, authorship, intended audience and contextual interpretation.
- Close reading, annotated bibliography preparation and citation management using Zotero.
- Spreadsheet-based source cataloguing and manual checking of transcribed text against scanned originals.
Languages
Indonesian: native language. English: academic reading and coursework writing experience. Dutch: introductory coursework only; not sufficient for independent archival translation.
Example notes: Maya’s CV foregrounds source analysis and scholarly writing. It does not disguise a student event as a major conference or introductory language study as fluency. Referee details and a writing sample would be provided according to the target program’s instructions.
6. Improve your bullet points
Weak: “Helped with research.”
More useful STEM version: “Checked questionnaire coding and documented missing values for supervisor review.”
More useful humanities version: “Catalogued 60 newspaper items and recorded provenance for a supervised dissertation.”
Use an action, a specific contribution and relevant context. Add numbers only when they are true and meaningful. Avoid claiming that routine activities caused an impact you cannot demonstrate.
7. Final academic CV checklist
- Match the target program’s template, length and submission format.
- Use consistent dates and reverse chronological order within sections where appropriate.
- Confirm every title, institution, grade, award and document status.
- Separate completed achievements from plans and work in progress.
- Keep formatting simple, readable and consistent; check the exported PDF.
- Include a photograph or additional personal details only when the application specifically requires them.
- Remove fictional content, placeholders and irrelevant details before submitting.
- Keep the CV consistent with your personal statement and cover letter.
Official guidance and related reading
- University of Oxford: CV/résumé guidance for graduate applications.
- University of Oxford: academic application guidance.
- Personal statements for Asian scholarships: tips and example.
- Cover letters for Europe and Australia: tips and examples.
- Academic Writing hub.
Official guidance checked on 10 October 2026. Application requirements can change; verify the current instructions for your course and scholarship.