The short answer
An academic CV is a structured evidence document, not a career history. Lead with the sections that best demonstrate readiness for the specific award, describe each item as problem, method, your contribution and result, and label publication status honestly. Two pages for master's applications, three to four for doctoral and postdoctoral.
Lead with relevant evidence
Reviewers read the first half page properly and skim the rest. Place the sections that best demonstrate readiness for this particular opportunity near the beginning, which means the order changes between applications.
For a research award, research experience and publications go above teaching. For a professional fellowship, applied work and responsibility go above conference posters.
Core sections
- Contact information, ORCID and professional links.
- Education with dates, institutions, classifications and thesis titles.
- Research experience with methods, tools and your own contribution.
- Publications, presentations and working papers with honest status labels.
- Teaching, professional experience and service where relevant to the award.
- Technical, language and analytical skills, with proficiency stated precisely.
- Awards, grants and funding, with amounts where they are public.
- Referees, or a line stating they are available on request.
Describe contributions clearly
- State the research or operational problem in one clause.
- Name the method, instrument, dataset or tool you used.
- Explain your own contribution, distinct from the team's.
- Report a result, output or decision that followed.
Label publication status honestly
Reviewers check this, and an overstated status is the fastest way to lose credibility across the whole document. Use published, in press, accepted, under review, submitted, in preparation — and use them accurately.
In preparation carries almost no weight, so listing several is not the advantage it appears to be. One under-review paper described accurately is worth more than four aspirational entries.
Quality check
- Dates and titles are consistent with your transcripts and other documents.
- Publication status is not overstated anywhere.
- The most relevant evidence appears in the first half page.
- Formatting is readable and stable when exported as a PDF.
- The file follows any official page limit, without shrinking margins or fonts to comply.
- The filename contains your name and the document type.
Example: A research experience entry
Weak version
Research Assistant, Department of Economics (2024–2025). Assisted with various research projects and helped with data analysis. Gained valuable experience in research methods.
Stronger version
Research Assistant, Department of Economics, University of Nairobi (Jan 2024 – Aug 2025). Built the panel dataset for a study of mobile-money adoption across 12 counties, merging four administrative sources (n≈180,000 households) in Stata. Wrote the deduplication and validation routines still in use by the group. Co-authored the measurement appendix in the working paper below.
Why the second version works
- It names the dataset, its scale and the tooling, so a reviewer can judge technical level.
- It separates your contribution from the project's, which is what is actually being assessed.
- The lasting output — routines still in use — is concrete evidence rather than a claim of value.
- 'Gained valuable experience' is removed: it describes a feeling, not a capability.
Example: A publications section
Weak version
Publications - Paper on mobile money (in preparation) - Paper on financial inclusion (in preparation) - Conference paper, 2025
Stronger version
Publications and presentations Peer-reviewed 1. Otieno, A., & Mwangi, R. (2025). Measurement error in mobile-money adoption panels. Journal of African Economies, 34(2), 211-238. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx Under review 2. Otieno, A. (2026). County-level heterogeneity in agent network coverage. Submitted to World Development, March 2026. Conference presentations 3. Otieno, A. (2025, July). Deduplicating administrative household panels. Centre for the Study of African Economies Conference, Oxford. [Oral]
Why the second version works
- Status categories are explicit, so nothing is ambiguous or inflated.
- Full citations with a DOI let a reviewer verify the record in seconds.
- Presentation type is stated, because an oral presentation and a poster are not equivalent.
- Speculative in-preparation entries are dropped rather than padding the list.
Academic CV skeleton
Reorder the blocks so the strongest evidence for this specific award appears first.
[FULL NAME] [Email] · [Phone] · [City, Country] · [ORCID] · [Google Scholar or personal site] EDUCATION [Degree, Class/GPA], [Institution], [Country], [Start-End] Thesis: "[Title]". Supervisor: [Name]. [Relevant coursework, only if it demonstrates method training.] RESEARCH EXPERIENCE [Role], [Group/Department], [Institution], [Start-End] [Problem]. [Method/data/tools]. [Your contribution]. [Result or output]. PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS Peer-reviewed [Full citation with DOI] Under review [Citation, journal, month submitted] Conference presentations [Citation, venue, oral/poster] TEACHING AND SUPERVISION [Role], [Course], [Institution], [Term]. [Scale: students, hours, responsibility.] TECHNICAL AND LANGUAGE SKILLS [Software/methods, with level.] [Languages with framework level, e.g. CEFR C1.] AWARDS AND FUNDING [Award], [Awarding body], [Year], [Amount if public]. REFEREES [Name, title, institution, email] — or "Available on request."
Common reasons applications are rejected
- Overstated publication status, which reviewers verify and which discredits the whole document.
- A generic CV reused across awards with no reordering for relevance.
- Listing responsibilities without contributions or results.
- Padding with secondary-school achievements or unrelated certificates.
- Exceeding the page limit, or evading it with 9pt fonts and hairline margins.
- Missing dates, or dates inconsistent with transcripts and the application form.
- Sending a Word file that repaginates on the reviewer's machine instead of a PDF.
- Language proficiency stated as 'fluent' with no framework level or test result.
How this changes by scholarship type
- Doctoral and postdoctoral applications
- Research, publications and methods lead. Three to four pages is normal, and a short research-interests statement at the top helps a reviewer place you quickly.
- Taught master's scholarships
- Two pages maximum. Education and relevant professional experience lead; a long publication section is not expected and an empty one is not a weakness.
- Professional and leadership fellowships
- Scale of responsibility, budgets, teams and measurable outcomes lead. Academic outputs move below professional experience.
- Grant applications
- Many funders require a fixed CV format with strict section limits. Use their template exactly; a stronger free-form CV is often rejected administratively.
This is a broader relevance count across the guide's linked opportunity collections, not a claim that every record explicitly requires this document or action.
Opportunities that need this
- PhD scholarships · 20 opportunities
- Postdoctoral fellowships · 4 opportunities
- Research grants · 1 opportunity
- PhD scholarships in the United Kingdom · 3 opportunities
- PhD scholarships in Germany · 2 opportunities
Official sources
Frequently asked questions
How long should an academic CV be?
Two pages for taught master's applications, three to four for doctoral and postdoctoral. Always follow a stated limit; where a funder gives a template, use it even if your own format is better.
Should I include a photo?
Only where the country's convention expects one and the funder has not prohibited it. UK, US, Australian and Canadian applications should not include one.
What if I have no publications?
Omit the section rather than padding it. For master's applications it is not expected. Substitute evidence of method training: a dissertation, a technical report, a dataset you built, or a conference poster.
Should the CV repeat what is in my statement?
No. The CV is the verifiable record; the statement explains what it prepared you for. Repetition wastes both documents' limited space.
Scholarship Signalguides support preparation. The provider's current application rules, templates and limits remain authoritative, and they change between cycles. How this guidance is written and reviewed