Academic CV: Format, Sections, and Examples by Career Stage

An academic CV is the document hiring committees, admissions panels, and grant reviewers use to judge your scholarly record. Unlike a resume, it isn't a highlight reel. It's a structured, complete account of your education, research, publications, teaching, funding, and service, and readers expect it to follow the conventions of your field.

That completeness creates its own problems. Which sections belong at the top? How do you list a paper that's still under review? What does a first-year PhD student put on a CV with almost nothing in it, and when does a postdoc's CV start to sprawl?

This guide answers those questions with a clear section order, rules for each section, decision tables by career stage and institution type, worked examples for three career stages, and a method for turning your CV into an industry resume when you need one.

What is an academic CV?#

CV stands for curriculum vitae, Latin for "course of life." In the United States and Canada, the term mostly refers to the long-form academic document described here. In the UK, Europe, and many other countries, "CV" is also the everyday word for a job-search resume, so check which one an application really wants. Our guide to CV vs. resume covers those regional differences.

An academic CV has three defining features:

• It is comprehensive. It records all of your scholarly activity, not just the parts relevant to one job.
• It is conventional. Section names, citation styles, and ordering follow the norms of academia and your discipline.
• It grows. You add to it every time you publish, present, teach a course, or win funding, so it gets longer over a career.

Academic CV vs. resume at a glance#

When you need an academic CV#

You'll need an academic CV, rather than a resume, in these situations:

• Applying to research-based graduate programs, especially PhD programs
• Applying for postdoctoral positions and research scientist roles at universities
• Applying for faculty positions, including tenure-track, lecturer, and adjunct roles
• Applying for fellowships, grants, and scholarships that ask for a CV
• Going up for tenure, promotion, or annual review at your institution
• Being considered for editorial boards, review panels, or invited talks

Federal research funders often ask for a short biographical sketch in a set format instead of a full CV. The NCBI's SciENcv system is a researcher profile tool built for people who apply for or receive federal research funding, and it helps you generate those documents from your record.

What the academic job market looks like#

Faculty roles are competitive, so a well-built CV matters. According to the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, there were about 1,378,200 postsecondary teacher jobs in 2025, and employment is projected to grow 7 percent from 2025 to 2035, with about 103,300 openings each year. The typical entry-level education is a doctoral degree, though some community college roles accept a master's.

BLS also notes that reaching tenure can take up to seven years, moving through the ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor, and that part-time adjunct roles are common. Median annual pay for postsecondary teachers was $85,330 in May 2025, but pay varies widely by field.

Academic CV format: layout and formatting rules#

Hiring committees read dozens of CVs for a single search. A clean, conservative format lets them find what they need quickly. Vanderbilt's career center, in its guide to crafting an academic CV, recommends reverse chronological order, consistent and conservative formatting, your name and page numbers in the header or footer, spelled-out acronyms, and no photos or personal information.

Formatting specs that work in most fields#

Formatting rules to follow#

• Use reverse chronological order within every section, newest item first.
• Keep one layout throughout. If one section uses hanging indents for citations, they all should.
• Spell out acronyms on first use. Committee members from other subfields won't know your lab's shorthand.
• Avoid dense paragraphs. Most entries need a line or two, not a description block.
• Skip graphics, photos, and skill bars. They add nothing a committee values.

For font choices that read well on screen, see our guide to the best resume fonts. The same principles apply to CVs.

Academic CV sections in order#

Most academic CVs share a core set of sections. Include the ones you can fill with real entries and leave out the rest. An empty or one-item section looks weaker than no section at all.

Contact information#

Put your full name at the top, followed by your current title and institution, a professional email, a phone number, and a link to your faculty or personal website. Add your ORCID iD if you have one. ORCID provides a free, persistent identifier that connects researchers to their contributions and affiliations, which helps reviewers find your work even if your name is common.

Education#

List degrees in reverse chronological order: degree, field, institution, and year (or expected year). For a doctorate, add your dissertation title, your advisor, and, if useful, your committee members. Master's thesis titles belong here too. If you're unsure how to phrase an in-progress degree or a thesis line, the free education section generator produces clean, consistent entries you can adapt.

Leave out high school once you're in college, and leave out undergraduate GPA once you hold a graduate degree unless an application asks for it. Our guide to education on a resume covers formatting for expected and in-progress degrees.

Research interests#

A short line or two naming your areas of research. Keep it specific enough to be useful ("coastal wetland carbon storage and remote sensing") rather than generic ("environmental science").

Two or three phrases separated by semicolons is usually enough. A historian might write "Atlantic world trade networks; early modern port cities; digital mapping of shipping records." A computer scientist might write "privacy-preserving machine learning; federated learning; health data." Save the narrative explanation for your research statement.

Academic appointments#

List current and past positions in academia: assistant professor, postdoctoral fellow, visiting scholar, lecturer. Include title, department, institution, and dates. Graduate students usually skip this section or fold research assistant roles into research experience.

Publications#

The heart of most research CVs. Use your field's citation style, bold your own name in author lists, and separate categories such as peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. The next section explains this in detail.

Grants, fellowships, and funding#

List funding you received, with the funder, title, your role (such as principal investigator or co-investigator), the amount, and the dates. Include competitive internal grants and travel awards early in your career.

Unfunded proposals usually stay off the CV. Some fields accept a "Pending" or "Submitted" subsection for proposals under review, but label them clearly and remove them once a decision arrives.

Honors and awards#

Dissertation awards, best paper awards, teaching awards, and competitive scholarships go here. Add a few words of context if the award's prestige isn't obvious. See our guide to listing awards and honors for formatting options.

Teaching experience#

List courses with your role (instructor of record, co-instructor, teaching assistant), course title and number, institution, term, and enrollment if helpful. Teaching-focused institutions often read this section first.

Presentations and invited talks#

Conference presentations, posters, and invited talks, cited like publications with event name, location, and date. Separate invited talks from contributed presentations; invited talks carry more weight.

Service#

Department and university committees, peer review for journals, conference organizing, and mentoring. Note journals you've reviewed for as a list, not with counts per journal, unless your field expects counts.

Professional memberships, skills, and languages#

Scholarly societies, research methods, lab techniques, software, and languages with proficiency levels. Keep this compact. Technical fields value a methods section; humanities fields value languages.

Optional sections worth considering#

Depending on your field and stage, these sections can add real evidence. Use them only when you have two or more strong entries:

• Book projects or manuscripts in progress, common in the humanities
• Editorial roles such as associate editor or guest editor of a special issue
• Software, datasets, and patents, with links or repository identifiers
• Public scholarship and media, such as op-eds, podcasts, or museum exhibits
• Community engagement and outreach, including K–12 programs and public lectures
• Fieldwork and archival research, with locations and dates, in fields that value it

References#

Three or four references with name, title, institution, email, and phone. Usually your advisor, committee members, or close collaborators. Ask permission first; our guide on how to ask for a letter of recommendation has email templates.

How to order your academic CV by career stage and institution#

The core sections stay the same, but their order and weight shift depending on who you are and where you're applying. The rule is simple: put the most important evidence for this specific reader on page one.

Order by institution type#

Order by career stage#

The page split below shows how a PhD candidate applying to research universities might divide a four-page CV. It's a model, not a rule, but it shows how much space publications and presentations usually take.

How to list publications on an academic CV#

Publications are where most CVs gain or lose credibility. Reviewers check them carefully, so accuracy and honest labeling matter more than volume.

Choose one citation style and apply it everywhere#

Use the style that's standard in your discipline, such as APA in psychology and education, Chicago in history, or a journal-based style in the sciences. Whatever you choose, apply it consistently across every entry. Mixed styles signal carelessness.

Bold your name and keep the author order#

Keep the author order exactly as published, because author position signals contribution in many fields. Bold your name so readers can spot it. If your field uses symbols for equal contribution or corresponding authorship, add a short key at the top of the section.

Label every status honestly#

Use these status categories, in this order, within each publication type:

1. Published: The work is out, with full volume, issue, page, and DOI details.
2. In press or forthcoming: Accepted and awaiting publication.
3. Under review or submitted: Sent to a named journal and not yet accepted.
4. Revise and resubmit: Returned with a request for revisions; some fields list this separately.
5. In preparation: Being written; list sparingly and only if your field accepts it.

Handle a long publication list#

Once your list runs past a page or two, readers need help finding the work that matters. Number entries within each subsection so reviewers can refer to them ("item 14"), and consider a short "Selected Publications" block on page one for applications where space is tight, with the full list later.

Some fields expect citation counts or an h-index; most don't. Add metrics only if senior people in your discipline routinely include them, and link to a public profile instead of pasting numbers that go stale. If you have works with student coauthors, a small symbol and a one-line key show your mentoring record without a separate section.

Separate types of work#

Group publications into subsections such as peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, books, and non-peer-reviewed writing (reviews, public scholarship, reports). Peer-reviewed work goes first.

In the example below, the candidate's own name (Lee, J.) would appear in bold in the real document.

How to present teaching experience#

Teaching experience matters for almost every faculty role, and it can decide a search at a teaching-focused institution. Precision about your role is what makes this section credible.

Distinguish your teaching roles#

Add context that a committee can use#

A line of context makes teaching entries far more useful: enrollment numbers, course level, delivery format, and anything you designed. If you redesigned a lab, built a new syllabus, or used a teaching method your target department cares about, say so in one line.

Mentioning teaching evaluations#

A single summary number, such as an average course rating on a five-point scale, can help if it's strong and your field accepts it. Don't paste student comments into the CV; save them for a teaching portfolio or statement, where you can add context. If you have no formal evaluations, describe what you designed or changed instead.

If you're applying to teaching-focused institutions, you'll often also submit a teaching statement. Our guide to personal statement examples covers the narrative skills that carry over.

Academic CV examples by career stage#

The examples below show how the same structure adapts as a career grows. The names and institutions are generic; copy the structure, not the content.

Graduate school applicant (1–2 pages)#

At this stage, research experience and evidence of preparation matter most. Coursework, methods, and presentations fill in the picture.

PhD candidate on the faculty or postdoc market (3–5 pages)#

Now the dissertation leads. Publications, presentations, and teaching show you can sustain a research program and contribute to a department.

Postdoctoral researcher (4–8 pages)#

At the postdoc stage, independence becomes the story. Appointments move up, funding you wrote yourself gets more weight, and mentoring appears as its own section.

Documents that often go with an academic CV#

An academic application is a packet, and your CV is only one part. Reviewers read the CV alongside other documents, so they should tell a consistent story.

Make sure dates, titles, and publication statuses match across every document. A paper listed as "in press" on your CV and "under review" in your research statement makes a committee wonder which one is true. The free CV checker can flag inconsistencies and formatting problems before you submit.

How to tailor an academic CV for each application#

Tailoring an academic CV doesn't mean rewriting it. It means changing the order and emphasis so the first page answers the committee's main question. A focused pass takes under an hour once your master CV is current:

1. Read the job ad twice. Note the research area, teaching needs, and any required documents or formats.
2. Decide what the committee values most. Research output, teaching record, or fit with a specific program or center.
3. Reorder sections so that evidence appears on page one, right after education.
4. Adjust research interests to use the department's language where it honestly matches your work.
5. Promote relevant courses and talks. If the job needs someone to teach statistics, make sure your statistics teaching is easy to find.
6. Trim what doesn't serve this reader, such as minor service items or old posters, if space is tight.
7. Check consistency against your cover letter and statements, then save a dated PDF.

What to include when you have very little to list#

First-year graduate students and recent undergraduates often worry that their CV looks empty. It doesn't need to look like a professor's. Focus on evidence of research potential:

• Research experience of any kind, including lab work, independent studies, and honors theses
• Methods and technical skills, such as statistical software, lab techniques, or archival languages
• Relevant coursework, especially graduate-level or methods courses taken as an undergraduate
• Presentations, including campus research days and student symposia
• Awards and scholarships, including department honors and research grants
• Teaching or tutoring, such as peer tutoring, lab assistance, or writing center work

Combine thin sections where it makes sense. "Presentations and Awards" with three solid entries reads better than two separate sections with one entry each. Our guide to relevant coursework on a resume shows how to present classes that prove skills.

Academic CVs outside the United States#

Norms differ by country. Some countries expect personal details or a photo that U.S. committees would never ask for, and some funders or universities provide their own CV templates. If you apply abroad, look at the CVs of recent hires in the target department, which many faculty post on their websites, and follow the institution's instructions. Our guide to international resume formats covers regional conventions.

Common academic CV mistakes#

Most weak CVs fail on clarity and accuracy rather than achievements. Watch for these problems:

• Padding with trivial entries. Listing every lab meeting talk or minor committee dilutes your strongest work.
• Inconsistent citation formats. Switching styles mid-section looks careless to detail-oriented reviewers.
• Burying your best evidence. If you're applying to a teaching college, don't put teaching on page four.
• Vague research interests. "Biology" tells a committee nothing about your fit.
• Inflated publication status. Mislabeling a paper's status is the fastest way to lose trust.
• Unexplained acronyms. Your subfield's shorthand may be unknown to half the committee.
• No name or page numbers on later pages. Printed CVs get separated and reshuffled.
• Stale information. An old email address, a "forthcoming" paper published a year ago, or a missing recent grant all suggest you don't maintain your record.

Run a final proofread with a fresh eye, or ask a colleague to read it. The free resume grammar checker catches typos and tense inconsistencies in descriptive lines.

How to turn an academic CV into an industry resume#

Many PhDs and postdocs apply to jobs in industry, government, or nonprofits, where hiring managers expect a one- or two-page resume. Sending a ten-page CV to a company usually signals that you don't understand the audience.

What changes when you convert#

• Length: Cut to one or two pages. Most publications become a single summary line.
• Order: Lead with a summary and skills, then experience. Education moves down.
• Language: Replace discipline jargon with outcomes a non-specialist understands.
• Evidence: Turn research into results: datasets built, methods developed, tools used, people managed, money secured.
• References: Remove them; employers ask later.

Our guide to the career change resume explains how to reposition experience for a new field, and the resume formats guide helps you choose a structure. If you go this route, Resume Maker can import your existing CV from a PDF or Word file and help you rework it into a one-page resume with an AI assistant whose edits you can undo.

How to keep your academic CV current#

A CV is easiest to maintain when you update it as things happen, not the night before a deadline. Build a small routine:

• Add items the week they happen: a paper acceptance, a talk, a new course, a grant decision.
• Review statuses every quarter: move papers from under review to in press to published.
• Archive, don't delete: keep old or minor items in your master CV even when you drop them from tailored versions.
• Save dated versions: name files with the date so you can see what you sent to each committee.

Final checklist before you submit#

• Section order matches what this institution values most
• Every section uses reverse chronological order
• One citation style throughout, with your name bolded
• Every publication status is accurate as of today
• Name and page numbers appear on every page
• Acronyms are spelled out on first use
• References have agreed to be listed and know about this application
• File saved as a PDF with a clear name

Your next steps#

Start by building or updating your master CV: every degree, appointment, publication, presentation, course, grant, award, and service role, all in reverse chronological order and one consistent format. Then decide who your next reader is, a research university, a teaching college, a fellowship panel, or an industry employer, and reorder or convert accordingly.

Before you send it, ask your advisor or a trusted colleague in your field to read it with the job ad open beside it. A second reader catches the gaps you can no longer see, and that review is often the difference between a CV that lists your work and one that makes your case.