Overview
Applicants often submit a job-market résumé or a long list of every certificate they own. Admissions committees want something different: a clear record of education, research and relevant experience, organized so the most important evidence for this program is easy to find. A research PhD, a professional master's and an MBA each reward a different emphasis.
Format rules vary more than people expect. Some universities ask for one or two pages; some faculties require a standardized CV generated through an online form that must not be modified; some European programs accept or prefer the Europass format; US programs may say CV or résumé and mean slightly different things. We start from the instructions.
You provide the facts. We suggest structure, order and wording, flag missing or unclear information and edit for consistency and precision. Every entry must be accurate: we never inflate titles, dates or contributions.
Who it’s for and the problems it solves
This is for you if you are…
- Master's and PhD applicants preparing an academic CV for the first time
- MBA and professional master's applicants turning a work résumé into an admissions résumé
- Scholarship and fellowship applicants whose CV is scored for leadership or impact
- Undergraduate applicants asked for an activities résumé by some programs or scholarships
- International applicants adapting a CV from another country's conventions
Common problems we help with
- Your CV is a job résumé and says little about research or academic preparation
- It runs to four pages and the program asks for two
- You are unsure how to list publications in preparation, conference posters or co-authored work
- Your experience descriptions list duties rather than what you achieved or learned
- Your CV includes a photo, date of birth or other personal details and you are not sure whether to keep them
What’s included — and what isn’t
Included
- Review against each program's CV instructions, including page limits and required formats
- Recommended section order for your target programs (education, research, publications, experience, skills, awards, service)
- Guidance on research entries: project title, supervisor, methods, your role and outputs
- Correct presentation of publications, preprints, posters and work in progress without overstatement
- Rewriting advice for experience bullets to show actions, methods and results
- Advice on personal details, photos and country conventions, including Europass where relevant
- Consistency check with your statement of purpose, application form and transcript
- Line editing and formatting for clean, readable layout in Word or LaTeX
Not included
- Adding roles, publications, skills, awards or dates you cannot document
- Describing co-authored or team work as solely your own
- Faculty job-market CVs (covered by our academic careers service)
- Portfolio design for art, design or architecture programs
What you receive
- CV review report
- A short report on structure, emphasis, missing information and fit with each program's requirements.
- Marked-up CV
- Your CV with suggested reordering, cuts and wording changes as tracked edits and comments.
- Clean formatted version
- A tidy final version in your preferred format once you have approved the changes.
- Variant notes
- If you apply to different program types, notes on how to adapt the CV for each.
How it works
Send your CV and targets
Share your current CV, program list and any CV instructions or templates they provide.
Review
We assess structure and content and send a review report with questions about unclear entries.
Revise together
You supply details and confirm facts; we edit and restructure with tracked changes.
Finalize
We format the final version and check it against your statement and application form.
Conventions we apply
- Reverse chronology
- Most recent first within each section, with consistent date formats.
- Research-first ordering
- For research degrees, research experience and outputs placed near the top, after education.
- Achievement-focused bullets
- Starting with a verb, naming the method or tool, and ending with an outcome where there is one.
- Accurate publication status
- Published, accepted, under review, in preparation, or preprint, with full author lists and your position.
- Length discipline
- Cutting entries that do not support the application, such as dated school activities, when space is tight.
- Local conventions
- Guidance on photos, personal details, grading-scale explanations and Europass for European programs.
CV or résumé?
In US usage, a résumé is a concise one- to two-page summary focused on work and achievements, common for MBA and professional master's applications, while a CV is a fuller academic record used for research programs. Elsewhere, "CV" is used for both. If your program's instructions give a page limit or template, that decides the format.
Some universities specify exactly what they want. Oxford, for example, describes most graduate CVs as usually one or two pages summarizing recent achievements, but asks applicants to certain science programs to generate a standardized CV through an online form. Checking these rules first avoids an incomplete application.
Presenting research and co-authored work
Research experience is usually the most valuable part of a graduate CV, and the part most often described vaguely. We help you give each project a clear title, supervisor or group, dates, the methods you used and what came out of it, such as a thesis, poster, dataset or paper.
For publications, accuracy is essential. List all authors in the published order, mark your own name and state status honestly. A manuscript "in preparation" is not "under review", and a poster is not a paper. Committees and interviewers notice inflated entries.
- Use a consistent citation style for all outputs
- Separate peer-reviewed publications from presentations and preprints
- Explain your contribution in a team project in the description, not by changing the author list
Making the CV and statement work together
Your statement should interpret the most important entries on your CV, not repeat them. We check that dates, titles and roles match across documents and that the experiences your statement relies on are visible on the CV.
What the work can look like
Illustrative example — fictional data
Illustrative before-and-after of a research entry
A fictional applicant to a PhD in neuroscience lists her undergraduate lab work under "Work experience" with a single line. The example shows the kind of revision we suggest; she supplied all details.
Before
Research assistant, Cognitive Lab, 2024–2025. Helped with experiments and data.
After
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Cognitive Neuroscience Lab (supervisor: named professor), Sept 2024–June 2025. Ran EEG sessions with 40 participants; preprocessed data in MATLAB (EEGLAB); wrote analysis scripts for event-related potentials; co-authored a poster at the university research day.
Placement
Moved to a new "Research experience" section directly after Education, with the poster listed under "Presentations".
Illustrative example with invented details. We only include information you provide and can verify.
What you’ll need to provide
- Your current CV or résumé, in an editable format
- The CV instructions or template for each program, if any
- Details of research projects, publications and presentations, including co-authors and status
- Transcripts or a summary of grades and awards, for consistency checks
- Your statement of purpose draft, if available
You don’t need everything ready to ask for a quote — tell us what you have and we’ll say what’s missing.
What affects price and turnaround
Price depends on
- Length and complexity of your current CV
- Number of program types needing different versions
- Whether you want a review report only or full editing and formatting
- Formatting in LaTeX or a required template
Turnaround depends on
- How quickly you can confirm details and publication status
- Number of versions required
- Whether the CV is reviewed together with other documents
Every project is quoted individually. How we price our work.
Questions people ask before starting
How long should my admissions CV be?
Follow the program's limit. Without one, one to two pages is typical for master's and MBA applicants; research-heavy PhD applicants may need slightly more. Length should come from substance, not formatting.
Should I include a photo?
Usually not for US, UK, Canadian or Australian applications. Some European and Asian programs still see photos, and Europass allows one. We explain conventions for your target countries so you can decide.
Can I list a paper that is still in preparation?
Yes, if you label it accurately and the work is real. Status labels such as in preparation, submitted, under review or accepted must reflect the truth.
Do you work with LaTeX CVs?
Yes. We can edit Word, Google Docs or LaTeX/Overleaf CVs and keep your template, or suggest a cleaner layout.
Is this the same as your faculty CV service?
No. Faculty and postdoc CVs have different conventions, such as teaching, grants and service sections. Those are handled by our academic careers service.