Graduate School Resume - You Need To Get It Right The First Time
The quality of your graduate school resume can very well be the thing that makes or breaks your chances of getting into not just the Ivy League graduate schools but even the graduate school of your choice. The number of applicants to the best graduate schools often exceeds the available positions so you will need to outshine other hopefuls by presenting a graduate school resume that stands out from the resumes of the other applicants.

Having a good resume is a means to an end as your admission to the most competitive graduate schools and subsequent graduation will place you in good stead of landing the most high end graduate school jobs. A good graduate school resume needs to incorporate several vital pieces of information including certifications, honors, community work, research work, published papers and key achievements from your undergraduate studies as well as your office career. The quality of the information you give about yourself increases your chances of a successful application and an interview call up.

Overall format

Among the first things you need to decide on are the formatting specifications for your graduate school resume. The font you use should be formal, clear and easily legible. Times Romans is usually considered to be a good formal font but there are other appropriate font types such as Arial, Tahoma and Calibri. Comic Sans is one of the fonts you must never use on a graduate school resume or even in an application letter for graduate school jobs since it comes across as lackadaisical and laid back, characteristics that might not be popular with the majority of employers.

Make sure that the resume sections are all correctly positioned, with uniform indent for similar headings and the use of bullets, italic, bold and spacing to make reading easier, emphasize key points and reduce monotony. Your resume for graduate school can go beyond the traditional 2 page resume limit-in fact, getting to the third and fourth page is quite acceptable. Nowadays, you will often be required to send your resume in electronic copy. However, if you must send a hard copy, the paper quality must be top notch and the printed document must be smudged. The quality of your documentation is one of things that the admissions department will be looking at as a peek into your level of professionalism and how serious you consider getting into graduate school to be.

Bio Data

The top of your graduate school resume needs to indicate your name and contact information. It must be clear to anyone who takes a quick glance at the resume who you are and how you can be reached. Have a professional email address: if you must use internet email services such as Yahoo, Gmail or Hotmail, the email you settle for should ideally be tagged to your name or your career aspirations but you must be careful not to overdo the aspirations element. Do not forget to double check your contact details in case you keyed in something incorrectly. If the graduate school decides to contact you, you do not want to miss out an opportunity simply because your letter was sent to a wrong address or you could not be reached on phone or email.

The bio data section is also where you start to market yourself by alluding to your personal drive and what you expect attending that particular graduate school will achieve in helping you meet your goals once you hit the graduate schools job market. Many graduate schools will require you to write a separate and comprehensive personal statement to accompany your graduate school resume and that will clearly indicate your career aspirations. One approach you can take is to develop the comprehensive personal statement first and then using it to come up with a summarized version (3 to 5 sentences) of its content for incorporation into the resume.

Work Experience

A number of graduate schools and graduate school programs will require you to have work experience in order to be eligible for admission in which case you need to talk about your work experience. However, even if the graduate school does not require it, it is important to still indicate this in order to have an edge over other candidates. Emphasize your personal contribution as opposed to general involvement-how did you facilitate the successful achievement of the task at hand?

Other elements that must form part of your graduate school resume include your academic qualifications and any community service you have been involved in.

Graduate school resume resources

There are many other things that you need to consider when developing graduate school resumes or graduate school jobs resumes. You don't have to grapple around on your own-there are various online resources you can make use. PreferredResumes.com is definitely one of the sites you must not overlook when developing or polishing up your resume.