What to put in the CV for a masters application

Question

I am wondering what I am supposed to put in my CV/Resume that is asked for Masters applications.

I was thinking about a general structure of

• Education
• Work Experience
• Publications
• (Technical Skills?)
• MOOC Certificates
• Awards & Scholarships
• Engagements
• Ancillary Work (Awards not related to CS domain)

Then, in Germany I would not be expected to list technical skills (would be just a boring list of 10 languages and a vast number of frameworks, Libs, etc.). However, I saw that in the U.S. some people even start to list their skills by categories such as Hardware, Software, Databases, Scripting languages.. - Should I mention any technical Skill on the CV, and if yes should it be organized in a classified manner as described?

I did an integrated, corporate degree and after that worked for one year full time. Therefore, I held 7 different positions, from which three were not technical positions. It would show my diversity but on the other hand also occupy some additional space. Should I still mention them?

Besides of my last question, is there any other suggestion for the structure of a US CV? Research led to so many completely different approaches how to structure a CV for educational purpose applications that I am not sure anymore.

Answer 1

Mine has been organized like following and I received a very positive feedback from my current supervisor (from world top 20 school) within contacting him for the first time with my CV:

• Contact Information: actually, I can assume that you didn't name it, but implicitly are going to consider.

• Research Interests: an important part, because the first impression of your CV on potential supervisor could be her persuasion about your agreement on the same research topics, potentially.

• Education: Top-Down chronological list of educations from the most recent one to the others (Don't forget to cite corresponding GPAs).

• Publications: The impact of journal publications are often higher than proceeding ones for the reader. So, I'd just classified my publications into two groups as Journal Papers & Proceeding Papers. You better consider a hyperlink for each paper's title addressing to the internet webpage of that paper. Probably, the potential supervisor will be eager to check some of your publications. If you do, she might be more satisfied than sending you an email and asking you send her the target paper.

• Honors and Awards: Just do mention really glorious things, such as scholarships, amazing ranks, olympiad medals and so on. As an instance, my B.A.Sc. was nominated for the best thesis award of IEEE Iran section and it was among one of 5 finalist papers; and I did mention this stuff within this section.

• Academic Experiences: I filled this section out with my TA experiences. Furthermore, I did assert my experiences to collaborate with some journals and conferences as guest reviewer. You may find a variety of other different items to cite.

• Industrial Experiences: Some positions (for example technical Ph.D. positions in north Europe) are considerably industrial, in that the applicant will be supposed to work on a project defined by industry. In such cases, you can address your relevant professional experiences (if you have any) to show your familiarity with industrial atmosphere and its required level of commitment.

• Computer Skills & Programming: Inseparable implicitly-required items from almost all kinds of positions. But be careful just to mention the capabilities of which you are master, noticeably. Because the reader will expect you to be fluent on all the things you have already claimed.

• Linguistic Skills: Just pinpoint grades of your linguistic tests (TOEFL, GRE, etc.)

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Arbitrary sections: I did consider sections, below, but one may posit that they are not necessary:

• Memberships: If you are member of any particular organization "related to the target program", you can address it. As an instance, being a PEO (Professional Engineer of Ontario) may be interesting for a potential supervisor with an industrial project.

• Hobbies: be careful list the things not to present you as a nerd. :)

Good luck