CV/résumé

Most courses do not require a CV (résumé) document to be uploaded to your application, so you should only upload one where this is specified in the Completing your application section of the relevant course page.

If a CV is uploaded to your application where it is not required, it will be removed from your application, so do not skip these questions expecting the information to be available in your CV instead.

Courses which do not require a CV to be uploaded will capture information about your experience in the following sections within the CV part of the application form:

• Professional qualifications and training courses
• Employment experience
• Research experience
• Publications, pre-prints
• Presentations, posters and performances
• Prizes and awards
• Skills and interests
• Other information

You can add additional lines to these sections where necessary, but should only include material relevant to your application. You do not need complete every CV question category in the application form if you do not have relevant information to add, but please note that you will not be able to insert additional material here after submitting your application.

Where a separate CV is required, it should be one or two pages in length and provide a summary of your recent achievements. It should provide details of your qualifications, any publications and any other experience relevant to your application.

There will be a slot on the ‘Supporting documents’ tab of the application form to upload it and there will be no additional fields to complete in the application form.

If your course requires a CV/résumé, DPhil in English Literature alumna Ellen Brewster suggests how to approach writing one for graduate applications.

"You probably won’t see a lot of other academic CVs before you have to write your own when you apply for graduate courses. It can be difficult to decide what’s relevant for this kind of CV and how you want to structure it, especially if you’re used to professional CVs for job applications."

If you’re not sure where to start, Ellen has some ideas on what to think about.

Get focused

What you should be trying to do is give the people who look at applications an understanding of the work you have done in the past, and how this relates to your application for your chosen course. Your academic CV should support your research proposal, statement or purpose or personal statement. Make sure you tailor it to the course you’re applying to, as far as possible. However, it’s less important than your proposal or statement, so don’t stress too much!

How long does it need to be?

There’s no specific page limit for academic CVs. That said, that shouldn’t be an excuse to put anything and everything on there. A page is often enough, especially at master’s level.