Writing A Scholarship-Awarding CV-Being a Fresh-Graduate
A guide to writing a CV for Erasmus+
In my previous post, I talked about Statement of Purpose, Where I got a huge response and received many requests to make a post dedicated to CV writing for Erasmus+.
So here I go, In this post, I will talk about my CV with which I had the pleasure to apply and be awarded the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Medical Imaging and Applications (MAIA), fully funded by the European Union.
From the title, you might have already guessed my profile when I was applying for Erasmus Mundus. I was just a fresh graduate with no publication, nor job experience. So I will try to reflect on the fact, how to write a research-based academic CV if you are fallen into this category. The nice thing is that After one year of the completion of MAIA, I have now little research experience and have simply Expand my old Erasmus CV which I still use (You can have a look at my current CV if you wish on my website https://fitushar.netlify.app/ ).
Here I will Simply discuss my Erasmus Application CV and mentions my mindset of that time. Let’s go through step by step.
CV is one of the most important parts of your Erasmus Mundus assessments. So you need to be very clear and to the point, and make sure that you don’t miss any of your key points, in your CV. I would say A good CV is that, through which the reviewers will get an overall view of your education, research experience, co-curricular activities, and achievements.
The first thing about Erasmus CV, it’s recommended to use Europass format but it’s not mandatory (Please check the program requirements to be sure). Europass has a wonderful website which you could use to make your CV.
I was not too comfortable with the web-based system as it was not giving me enough flexibility, So what I did: I downloaded the Europass Word Template and edit it according to my convenience.
- The first thing in your CV should be your name and contact info.
i. Your address and Email.
ii. If you have your website please do include it. I would recommend making one for you, as it’s really easy+free, if you have little knowledge of Github then can use Hugo Templates (https://fitushar.netlify.app/), or you can use it completely without coding approaches like using Weebly (like my old website https://fitushar.weebly.com/ )
iii. Include social media handles (LinkedIn, Twitter). Also please include, your Github, google scholar, and ResarchGate id if you have one.
2. STUDIES APPLIED FOR: As I was applying for MAIA I wrote that. It’s better to include the part as it shows you haven’t made a generic CV but you have made it for this program, which kind of psychologically proves your genuine interest in the programs.
3. Educational: One question many people asked about the education part of CV is do we need to add 10th and 12 standard board exam results? To be honest, they actually don’t care anymore about your 10th and 12th when you are applying for masters, all they care about your undergrad, so adding 10th and 12 standard results is optional.
i) In the heading I have written my degree name and in the sub-heading given my university name.
ii) Afterward how many credits I have completed with electives.
iii) Given the title of undergrad final year project.
iv) Lastly finished with my CGPA.
4.RESEARCH EXPERIENCE: This part is super important, which is an essential part of an academic research-based CV. In a research-based CV, they want to see a brief about all the key-projects you have done and what your was your contribution. As I mentioned earlier being a fresh-graduate I didn’t have much research experience, So I just mentioned my undergrad project and one app development experience that I did during the IEEEmadC competition.
Undergrad Final Year Project: Development of A Multichannel Modular Universal Biopotential Amplifier Trainer (RTR Module).
i) Have given the title and timeline of the project.
ii) state the background studies- As for any research works it’s very important to earlier done the necessary literature review to understand the field well.
ii) given a brief overview of the total project and finally ended with what was the requirements for the project to be done.
Mobile Application Development: ASHA- A Solution to Help Autism
i) Point out my role as a team leader by which I am pointing my leadership quality.
ii) Talked about the overall project and the contributions.
5. RESEARCH SKILLS: What I tried to do here a little different is that usually in software skilling/programming skills we just put the names, which is not expressive of your level of competence. so I tried to write in two ways as I also had some field experience (like doing a survey) during my master's thesis.
6. CO-CURRICULAR EXPERIENCE: I was fortunate enough to be part of several organizations and performed some key roles.
i) Not only just mentioning the titles, but I also added a brief of my key roles and responsibilities which give the reader a clear idea of what I actually did holding that post.
ii) Also one very important point, numbers are always better than the only sentence, So If just said “ I was a teacher at Literacy Through Leadership”
but If I say
In collaboration with Teach For Bangladesh,
contributed total of 78 hours in 13 weeks
period, 6 hours per week to improve 40
underprivileged Primary School students
English Reading and writing skills.
This sounds way better.
7. HONOUR & MEMBERSHIP: It’s a straightforward thing to list all your achievements, as I did. If you have any academic memberships add those.
8. REFERENCE: Lastly list your references. Not only putting the names and contact information, but I also added short info about my references in which way they are aware of my capabilities or know me well enough to refer me.
Here it is all about my CV and my point of view when I was writing it. I always tell that CV and SOP are co-related, In the CV you touch thing and In SOP you have the opportunities to give more background. In other words
If you consider yourself like a book, your CV would be the Index of your book and your Statement of purpose will have an intro about you, details> about your skills, showing your interest to the subject, lastly the conclusion why you are the IDEAL CANDIDATE for this program.
A pdf of my CV is available here:
I hope this post will help some people. Here are a few other posts I have written about Erasmus+ if you want to know more.
[1] Erasmus Mundus Scholarship FAQs
[2] My Erasmus Experience-MAIA
[3] Writing A Scholarship-Awarding Motivation Letter
