Approaching your medical residency applications and imagining the next phase of your medical career can be very exciting. However, the many application components that you need to put together often throw stressful and overwhelming feelings into the mix as well.
Among the many materials you’ll need to compile are your USMLE scores, ERAS letters of recommendation, medical school performance evaluations (MSPEs), residency personal statement, and medical CV. While your CV might at first glance seem like the least significant of all of these components, it actually plays a unique and important role in the application process.
As you begin to think through your overall residency application strategy, it’s a good idea to start the process of application prep by creating, formatting, and polishing your CV. Your CV can serve as a kind of cheat sheet as you work through your application, so by doing it early—even before your fourth year—you ensure you don’t forget your many accomplishments.
The words curriculum vitae come from the Latin for “course of life”—a CV aims to give a brief overview of the course of your professional life. A CV is more expansive and detailed than a resume, which should be no longer than a page to a page and a half. A CV, in contrast, can be two to three pages, while remaining clear and concise.
Your medical CV will provide an overview of your education, leadership, publications, volunteering, and the breadth and depth of your professional experience and accomplishments relating to medicine so far. It will help you make a strong argument that you are a top candidate for the residency programs you are applying to.
Writing and polishing your CV for residency (also referred to by some as your residency resume) is useful for your own mental preparation as you set out to write your residency personal statement.
You’ll also likely send this residency CV to faculty members and physicians in your target specialty from whom you’re requesting a letter of recommendation. Many medical schools will also ask for your residency CV as supporting material for your MSPE.
Finally, by creating and maintaining your CV very early on, you get a jump on the ideal residency application timeline. Taking on this task sooner rather than later will give you a sense of what gaps or weaknesses you might feasibly address in time to make you the strongest candidate possible for your desired residency.
Particularly if you start working on your CV early, you will likely have different versions of your CV for different purposes. Keep accurate notes regarding what you have updated and when. It can be helpful to note the date of last update in the file name, as well as the purpose of this particular version of your CV. For example: having two clearly named files like Taylor_Residency_CV_20200130 and TaylorSecondYearCV_20180325 will help you find relevant information and send the correct file each time.
Your CV for medical residency needs to demonstrate your experience and convey the professional totality of who you are in an efficient and easy-to-read format. It should leave the reader—the Director or associate leadership of the residency program to which you are applying—with a favorable impression of your professional and (relevant) personal strengths and accomplishments.
You can use the ERAS online system to generate a CV, but it produces a generic-looking resume without much opportunity for control over formatting. You’ll likely want to create and format your own resume for maximum control over format, and also so you can have it available to send as supporting material for recommendations and MSPEs.
You can find a full-length sample CV for medical residency at the end of this guide. Before that, we’ll talk through each component of that residency CV, analyzing its structure, formatting, and style.
Below is one effective structure for a residency CV that you can compile your information under. Keep in mind that anything you mention on your CV is fair game to bring up in your residency interview.
● Contact and personal information, with full legal name (no nicknames).
● Education, going in order from most to least recent. Below is an example education section from our sample CV.
