Getting Into Med School 3

When requesting letters of recommendation, it's important to bring a copy of your CV and Personal Statement when you meet up with the letter writer (or attach it to the email if you don't). If you're like me, you won't have your personal statement (or maybe even your CV) finished by the time you ask for a letter. That's ok as long as you give them a draft. They need something to work with.

CV Essentials

A CV (or curriculum vitae) is a summary of your experience, skills, and education. It's very similar to a resume but is more detailed (a description of what you did rather than just your position title) and includes more sections. I used one of the resume templates on Word to make my CV and mine was 3 pages long. It should include (if applicable):

• Research and publications (and posters and abstracts)
• Name of institution
• Mentor (full name and degree)
• Name of project and brief description
• Honors and Awards
• Academic Experience (not coursework)
• Clinical experience
• Volunteer experience
• Professional experience
• Certifications
• Eduction (any place after high school from which you earned a degree)

What not to include

• High school GPA/high school activities (unless you continued them in college)

What's nice about this is that you can use your CV when putting in your 15 activities in the AMCAS app.

You must be aware of verb tenses. If you're still doing it, use present tense. If you did it in the past, use past tense. This may seem simple but it's fairly common for people to write everything in past tense. Also, try to switch up the verbs you use. Instead of "I helped... I helped..." try "I helped... I assisted..." Feel free to use a thesaurus, but be careful. Sometimes people use random synonyms that don't make sense in the sentence.

It is important to be consistent with the format. Here's how my CV was organized:

• Personal and Contact Information
• Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• Email
• Professional Experience - three things
• Research Experience - one thing
• Academic Experience - five things
• I included my study abroad experience and talked about how I gained cultural insight along with learning from the school.
• DO NOT put courses here. I put academic programs in which I was involved (for example, a two year program geared towards promoting academic excellence in engineering science and a summer research program)
• Volunteer Experience - six things
• I put my shadowing under here
• Three things were medical related
• Leadership Experience - five things
• Training and Certification - EMT and CPR
• Career Goals
• This is optional. Some versions of my CV don't have this section.
• A few sentences about what I want to be (a physician) and what led me to this decision. I also included what I plan to do with my degree.
• It was a very small section.
• Education
• My Bachelor's Degree (and major), where I got it, and when I got it. If you haven't graduated yet, put the date you expect to graduate and then put "(expected)"
• Skills
• Technical (computer skills)
• General (important qualities and skills)

Everything was in chronological order under each category (starting with oldest and ending with the most recent). I ordered them by the date I began. So for example, April 2014-May 2015 would come before June 2014-January 2105 (even though the latter ended earlier).

My advisor told me about the "5 minute rule" which is if you can't talk about it for 5 minutes or know the names of the people involved, don't include it. Include things in which you were actively involved. Remember: quality over quantity. Most of the things I included in my CV were activities that lasted months or years.

Other CV Tips:

• Don't get fancy with your font selection. Stick to Times New Roman or Arial, etc.
• There's no formula for what you CV should look like but you should still look up and compare examples to make sure you're on the right track. You can click here to see some samples.

If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to leave them in the comment section below. Or you can email me directly using the "contact me" section at the bottom of my blog. Stick around for more tips and information! :)