The Curriculum Vita: A Student's Guide to Preparation

Undergraduate psychology majors with aspirations toward graduate school have a number of preparations to make. It is well known by now that the top factors that influence graduate school admissions are grade point average (GPA), Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores, letters of recommendation (Keith-Spiegel & Wiederman, 2000), research experience, and autobiographical statements (Landrum, Jeglum, & Cashin, 1994). Previous issues of Eye on Psi Chi (accessible at www.psichi.org) contain valuable guides on many aspects of the graduate school application process (Buskist, 2001; Dirlam, 1998; Lammers, 2000; Terre, 2002), including specific articles on the GRE (Matlin & Kalat, 2001; Norcross, 1997a; Walfish, 2004), writing a personal statement (Bottoms & Nysse, 1999; Osborne, 1996), the importance of transcripts (Appleby, 2003), earning strong letters of recommendation (Arnold & Horrigan, 2003), the odds of graduate admissions (Landrum, 2004), and application fees and deadlines (Norcross, 1997b). Although some guidance does exist on preparation of the curriculum vita (Hayes & Hayes, 1989; Plous, 1998), this article focuses on advice to students in CV preparation and includes a sample student CV.