You’re either finishing up undergrad or are just thinking about going into grad school, you may be asking yourself, “How should I write a resume to get me into grad school?”
If you’re reading this, you are probably toying with the idea of applying for a graduate school.
There are 5 main factors that go into a graduate school application:
- Undergraduate Transcripts
- Resume
- Personal Statement
- Test Scores (GRE, MCAT)
- Letters of Recommendation
Graduate schools are going to be receiving hundreds of applications from students wanting to attend their programs. You can’t change your transcripts, your test scores (unless you retake the test) or your letter of recommendations.
They say that graduation admission committees can take as little as 30 seconds to skim through your resume so you need to make sure your resume is not cluttered and covers only essential information.
Therefore, it is imperative that you are able to have a strong resume and personal statement to be a competitive applicant.
Making sure that your resume reflects your to-date experience, skills and accomplishments will help you to get into graduate school. You must also ensure that your resume is well written, succinctly build and consistently formatted.
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Disclaimer
I will be using the resume that I used to apply to the graduate school. I was accepted and studied at the University of Florida to study a Masters of Public Health (MPH) in the concentration of Management & Policy to give you some perspective.
Looking back now after I have completed graduate school, I see many ways that I can have improved my resume. Nonetheless, this resume was able to help me get where I am today.
I also had only 1 real job before graduate school which only lasted for a couple months and I didn’t think added value to my resume so I left it out.
Additionally, I had planned to do a Master’s of Medical Sciences and not an MPH initially. But this didn’t make too much difference to my resume besides from a shift from ‘labs I completed’ section (Ms Medical Science) to a ‘skills/interest’ section (MPH).
Now let’s begin.
Resume Sections
Resumes for applying to graduate school programs for the most part are ONLY going to be 1-page long. You will either have to be extraordinarily active during undergraduate or have been in the workforce before applying to grad school to have a 2-page resume.
However, more likely than not you will still want to keep your resume to 1-page because the quality of the information is stronger in your 1-pager than your 2-pager.
Note: Do not have a 2-page resume and have half the 2nd page blank. This makes for a resume that will be thrown away.
The typical resume that you are going to be submitting to graduate schools is going to have:
- Header (Name, email, address, phone number)
- Education
- Work Experience
- Awards & Accomplishments
- Skills/Interest
Additionally, some other resume sections that you may want to include are publications, labs completed/lab skills learned, certifications, and possibly links to your LinkedIn or other online profiles.
I would suggest that you LEAVE OUT of your resume:
- Career Objective or professionals statement
- A picture of yourself
- High School Education
- Paragraph Job Descriptions
- Using “I” anywhere in your resume
Header
This is the first thing that someone is going to see is the header on your resume.
As I stated earlier, the header is going to contain your:
- Name
- Mailing Address/Current Location
- Phone Number
You will want to ensure that your name is the biggest thing on your resume and stands out at the top. I could have either left my name ‘Align Left’ or I could have ‘Centered’ it.
When choosing your email you have to know if your university has policies that allow you to access your email address after graduation or not. This will have to be considered before you choose to use your university email or your personal email on your resume.
Mailing address/Current Location
Ideally you will want to include your entire physical mailing address here. However, if you are in the middle of moving then you may want to omit this completely or just write a city, state, and zip code. Or city, country for international students.
phone number
You should include your phone number in this section just in case they will want to contact you. Unlikely, but never a bad idea to include it.
Education
If you are applying to graduate school you have either finished your undergraduate program or you are in the process of completing it. Congratulations!
Your education section should consist of:
- The type of degree (Bs, BSc, BA, etc.)
- Major of study (Biology, Political Science, etc.)
- Your graduation month and year or expected graduation month and year
- Your GPA
- The city that your university or college was located
- Any minors completed
Though for jobs, people recommend that you leave your GPA off if its below a 3.0 average. I would suggest that you still write your GPA when applying to graduate school even if its not above 3.0.
Work Experience
This will probably be the longest and most important section of your resume.
Your work experience truly gives the insights into the duties that you were responsible for and will give the admission committee a feel for your professional aptitude.
Please note how I have kept my formatting the same throughout my entire work experience section. You will want to do the same so that it is easier to gloss through your resume and find out the important information quickly.
In hindsight, I should have had a more bullet-list like job descriptions as I have in my current resume (Download my free Resume Template). Also sign up to check out my new resume below in a template style to get even better insights on how to write your resume.
Also note that I only had volunteer positions before I applied to graduate school. But if you have job positions, I suggest you write the job description out like:
WellFlorida Council Inc. – Community Initiatives Assistant May 2018-Present
- Developed and authored Lake Shore Hospital Community Health Status Assessment
- Researched and developed white paper on opioids for Marion County, Florida
When writing your resume, you want to have a clear job title and about 4-5 bullet points to describe the job experience highlights at this specific position.
You will want to ensure that you are using good active words to describe the work you have done. (Click here for a list of strong active words to use on resume)
Additionally, quantifying the work that you done when possible will enhance the experience you are showing to the graduate school admission committee.
So if you are able to give specific details into how many people you helped or metrics that show a good performance. Be sure to include these in your work experience.
Lastly, since you are going to want to have a 1-page resume, you will potentially want to include any volunteering experience you think is relevant in this section as well.
(Click here to check out this article on writing job descriptions for your resume)
Awards & Accomplishments
Your Awards & Accomplishments Section is going to be the next important part of your resume that is equal to your Skills Section.
Awards & Accomplishments are a great way to show the admission committee the accomplishments that you are most proud of achieving.
Just ensure that these are relevant and showcase your best past so the admission committee can envision what you can accomplish in the future by being in their program.
You should also include a date for each award and accomplishment. Don’t be like me and not put a date for your PADI certifications lol.
A good idea for things to put into this section are:
- Scholarships
- Publications
- Certifications
- Academic Awards/Honor Roll
- Honor Societies
- Promotions in your job (once shows leadership increase)
- Work Related Awards
It would be ideal to list 3-5 of your best accomplishments and awards in this section.
Skills or Skills/Interest
Skills or Skills/Interest Section are just as important as your ‘Awards & Accomplishments’ Section, but it highlights the skills that you will be bringing to enhance the graduate school you are applying to.
Depending on the type of graduate program that you are applying to you will want to tailor your skills to it.
For example, if you are applying to a Master of Science program then you’d probably want to show that you have data analysis skills or programming skills. But if you’re applying to another Masters you may want to highlight skills such as leadership, public speaking, teamwork or critical thinking.
I suggest you do research on what best aligns with getting into the program and highlight those skills that you have acquired during undergrad or through work experience.
Additionally, I always believed that if you are a competitive candidate then you should try to show some personality on your resume and thus I chose to include interest such as poetry & cooking. This shows that though I’m a good student, I have other interest outside of just purely academics which makes you more personable.
You should maybe leave this ‘fun’ interest off if you don’t feel you are a competitive candidate and only highlight academic and work successes.
I even have this ‘fun’ trait on my resume that I applied to my fellowship with, I included my half marathon time. And would you know it, it came up during the interviewing process with the CEO. Get access to that resume below.
Pro Tips
Adding links that the graduate admission committee can click on to websites like LinkedIn, other online profiles, your blog, or other online work that you have done is something that can transform your resume. However, I am not sure if admission committees print out physical copies or use online version when looking at applicants.
But there is no loss in having clickable links, especially when job searching. During my fellowship interview process, my prospective employer at the time clicked on the link in my resume to look ay my LinkedIn profile.
(Related: 5 Things You Need to Know About Post Graduate Fellowships)
If you were on a lot of publications throughout undergraduate school, you may want to have a section on this included either as part of your ‘Awards & Accomplishments’ Section or as a section of its own.
If you are able to know persons who already have started the program or have been accepted, if possible, ask them to take a loot at their resume so you can get more insights into what a competitive applicant at that school looked like.
Lastly, it is usually beneficial if you are able to build rapport with someone at the university before applying to their program. So reach out to someone at the school and ask thoughtful questions so that you will be on their radar when comes times to review applications.
Conclusion
There are 5 factors that come into play in your graduate school application.
These are:
- Undergraduate Transcripts
- Resume
- Personal Statement
- Test Scores (GRE, MCAT)
- Letters of Recommendation
Resume and Personal Statement are the two things that you have the ability to manipulate and make as great as you would like.
You should think through your resume to ensure that you enhance every section so that you are able to showcase your best self to the graduate school admission committee.
Applying to graduate school can be a very exciting yet nerve-wrecking time in your life. Ensure that you are enhancing and tailoring your resume for every graduate program that you are applying to.
If you are applying to graduate school, I wish you the best of luck and I would love to follow your journey.
What did you do to enhance you resume before you applied to graduate school?
