How to Write an Academic CV
for Graduate School Applications

I have written and edited academic CVs professionally, and I have also sat on the other side of the process — applying to WUR Wageningen, HBKU Qatar, DAAD-funded programs in Germany, and GKS Korea. I know what a CV looks like when it is working. I also know the specific mistakes Bangladeshi applicants make repeatedly, because some of them were my own mistakes in earlier applications.

This post explains the structure of an academic CV for graduate school, section by section. It ends with a template you can copy directly into Word or Google Docs.

Graduate admissions committees read academic CVs differently from how HR departments read resumes. They are looking for research experience, academic output, and funding history, not a compressed summary. Length is not the problem most applicants think it is.

1Header

Your name at the top in a larger font. Below it: institutional email, phone number with country code, city and country, LinkedIn URL, ResearchGate URL. Include your ORCID if you have one.

Do not include a photo for most US, EU, or UK programs. It is not conventional there and can introduce bias that works against you. Do not include date of birth, marital status, or national ID number. City and country is enough for an address.

Your email matters more than people expect. Use an institutional address (.edu.bd) if you have one. A professional Gmail with your name is the next best option. A Hotmail account with a nickname from 2012 is not.

2Education

List in reverse chronological order. For each degree, include: the full degree name, the full institution name and its country, the dates (month and year), and your CGPA.

The CGPA entry needs care. Bangladeshi universities typically report on a 4.0 scale, which is straightforward. If your institution uses a percentage system, include both: "83% (equivalent to First Class Honours)". Do not leave this blank. Every serious admissions committee wants to see it, and a missing GPA reads as a red flag — not a sign of modesty.

Under the degree, write your thesis title on the next line. If you are mid-thesis, write: "Thesis (in progress): [Working Title]." Name your supervisor if they are worth naming. Do not include your secondary school certificate unless it is your only academic credential.

3Research Experience

This is the most important section in a graduate school CV. More important than awards, extracurriculars, or skills. The admissions committee is primarily asking: has this person done research? Can they run a project, collect data, and produce something?

For each position, write the role title, institution, and dates. Below it, use two or three bullet points describing what you actually did, at the level of method and output. The difference between a weak and a strong entry is specificity.

Name the instrument. Name the technique. Name the output. If your work fed into a conference presentation or a manuscript, say so explicitly.

Include all substantive research positions in reverse chronological order: your thesis work, research traineeships at institutions like BCSIR or DUNTC, funded projects, undergraduate research group work. If a project is ongoing, mark it as such.

4Publications and Conference Presentations

This section has sub-categories most people miss. List in this order: journal articles (published, then in revision, then in preparation — label each status clearly); conference proceedings with full conference name, location, and DOI where available; software or datasets if applicable.

A manuscript "in preparation" is legitimate to include. It signals active output. But be honest about the status: "submitted" means actually submitted; "in preparation" means actively being written, not a vague intention. Admissions committees have seen every version of inflation in this section.

For conference presentations: your name first if you presented, the full conference name, location, month and year, and a DOI or ResearchGate link if one exists. Even a conference abstract with a DOI counts and should be included.

5Awards and Fellowships

Reverse chronological order. Award name, granting organisation, year. One line each. Do not pad this section. A national fellowship (NST, BCSIR) carries real weight. A certificate of participation in a webinar does not. Padding makes the real entries harder to find.

6Technical Skills

Divide into subsections and be specific. Vague entries are worse than no entry at all.

7References

Graduate programs require real referees — named and contactable — not "References available upon request." Most applications ask for two or three letters of recommendation, and the committee wants to know who will write them before they make an offer.

For each referee: full name, current title, department, institution, email address. One line noting how they know you: "(MSc thesis supervisor)" or "(Research Trainee supervisor, BCSIR)." Choose referees who directly supervised your research. A professor who taught a lecture course is a weak choice compared to one who oversaw your thesis or a research project. International referees carry additional weight for international applications.

The Template

Copy this structure and fill in your own information. The rendered version below shows the layout; use it as a visual guide alongside the plain-text version you paste into Word.

Tailoring the CV to the Program

One CV does not serve every program well. Before submitting, read the program description and identify what they value most. A soil science MSc at Wageningen will look first at research experience and quantitative methods. An environmental policy program will prioritise publications and conference work on governance questions. A DAAD EPOS application wants evidence of professional experience and a clear development-relevant research plan.

Adjust the order of sections and the content of your research bullet points to reflect what this program is looking for. The research experience section is where this matters most: put the projects most relevant to the target program first, regardless of date order.

Five Mistakes in Most CVs from Bangladeshi Applicants

Formatting

Clean and readable beats designed and decorative. Black text on a white background. Times New Roman or Calibri at 11 or 12pt. One-inch margins. Consistent spacing throughout. No text boxes, no columns, no coloured headers, no profile photo for international programs.

Both a human reader and an automated screening system need to parse your CV cleanly. Decorative layouts — multi-column formats, coloured headers, embedded text boxes — often break both. A plain, well-structured Word document submitted as a PDF is the safest and most professional format for international applications.

The CV writing service on this site handles the full process: an intake form to gather all your experience, a structured and written document tailored to your specific target program, and one revision round. If you are preparing applications for DAAD, GKS, WUR, HBKU, or a US graduate program, that service is available to you.