Curriculum Vitae - MS in Ireland
Curriculum Vitae (CV) is your personal brochure. It features all your experiences and achievements. The Curriculum Vitae will be listed as a mandatory admission requirement for all Irish universities. A CV is different from a Resume. A Resume is professionally oriented whereas a Curriculum Vitae for Postgraduate Studies is focused on academics.
Table of contents
Typical time required: 2-3 days
This article comprises of a step-by-step guide on how to prepare a Curriculum Vitae along with useful tips. Even if you already have a CV prepared, we recommend you to go through this guide and customize it to the university-specific requirements.
Before You Start
- Get all your academic certificates, achievements and medals together before you start with the documentation work so that you won't forget to include relevant information.
Do a background check and see what kind of candidate your target university is expecting. You can look at the course details, research groups and professor profiles. Remember to include details of any internships, seminars and workshops that you have attended. A golden rule of a CV is to focus on your academic accomplishments over the professional ones. Professional involvements and achievements are also essential, but make sure to focus on academic accomplishments as well.
Reference Documents
- All your academic and extra-curricular certificates.
- Your language certificates, patents, publications, work experience certificates and training certificates if any.
- Your undergraduate project or thesis details.
Step by step Guide
- Think twice if you want to craft your CV from the beginning or simply improve your existing CV. Decide if you are going to use an online template or have it custom made on your PC.
- Include your personal details. Include/exclude some subsections to suit your academic and professional profile. Match the information to your target university requirements.
- Have the entire Curriculum Vitae fit into two pages, but do not make the pages packed with information.
- Verify all the details you have entered, once you have finished drafting. Save the CV in the original Word format and as a PDF file.
Useful Tips
- Your Curriculum Vitae should be restricted to two (A4) pages.
- The Admission Committee will spend only 2 to 3 minutes in going through your Curriculum Vitae, so ensure that it is well-organized, grammatically correct and easy to read.
- Mention the timeline of different events in a chronological order starting with the most recent milestone.
- Irish Colleges prefer British English over American English in the CVs.