Curriculum Vitae (Undergrad)

Dondums

First, a brief background. The time is coming for me to obtain letters of reference from various professors. Most of these professors I have only had one class with, though the ones I've chosen were in smaller classes where I feel they got to 'know me' moreso than in others. Regardless, the advice I have heard is that when asking for letters (or, specifically, when giving them the materials to do so) I should give them my curriculum vitae (CV), personal statement (this is for a pre-medical committee evaluation, after all), and any materials necessary to submit the letter itself.

The major issue I need guidance with is forming a CV. As an undergrad, I feel it'll be pushing it to even be 2-3 pages. I suppose that's expected, but I can not for the life of me find a decent CV template FOR undergrads - they're all graduate students or beyond with complicated and detailed credentials. Can the vast resources of the PA H/A forumers guide me to a starting point?

Also, as side notes:

1) I've been employed since 16, but none of my two jobs apply whatsoever to education, medicine, or anything beyond movie theaters or clothing retail. Should they even be included in an academic CV?

2) Three (out of four) of these professors I've only had one class with. For two of them, the class wasn't even this semester or last - is it a bad idea to ask these professors for a letter? One of them is very nice and talks to me when he sees me - the other is a bit loony but I hear very friendly to students. I can't choose other professors because of loony rules set forth by the committee*.

Just need a good launching pad. Any help / advice (!) would be appreciated. My Google-fu has been rather unhelpful.

*Four professors, all from different departments - two from natural science (Bio/Chem/Phys/Math), two from anything else.

Jasconius

Well, I wouldn't worry about getting it to 2 pages.

I would include non-related experience *if* it involves some sort of management experience, like an assistant manager. Otherwise... probably not, unless you had responsibilities other than just being a warm body. Money handling, key holding, etc, demonstrates trustworthiness to prospective professional employers. Outside of that, retail jobs just prove that you can occupy space and convert oxygen to CO2.

Your foot in the door is going to be your cover letter. Write with confidence and try to give the reader a hint that you really know your stuff, and that will get you in for the interview.

Dondums

For some reason the cover letter escaped me. I should be able to subtly suck up to the individual professors. Your help and advice is golden!

Just mustering up the courage to talk to some of these profs (one of which I haven't seen in over year) will be fun. Mmhmm.

Fuzzywhale

Does your school have a career center? If so I would stop by there as they probably have people getting paid to make sure your CV looks nice.

now i'm in a physics phd program, but I was always taught that any cv over one page is a very,very bad move. Maybe that's just physics but its something to think about.

The CV I had my careeer center do as an undergrad basically goes like this

1.university I'm enrolled in, when i expect to finish, and any other fancy pants awards.
2.list of courses and project-like things ive done.
3. any teaching ive done and other awesome skills like languages and programing.

if you're interested i could just send you mine and you could copy and paste for the formatting


also, my experience has been that professors of the departments you're a member of are usually happy to write you a letter, as long as you did well enough in their course, and hook them up with a resume/personal statement.

Dondums

Fuzzywhale, seeing your's would be excellent, especially if it does have what you expect to finish. Unfortunately, my google-fu has only turned up CVs with completed degrees, leaving me somewhat in the dark as to how to format an expected degree, which, at this point, will be my only one so far.

Also, I figure/hope my profs will be glad to write one - I'm letting them know over a month before it's due plan on providing absolutely everything they could ever need to complete it.

Fuzzywhale

okay here you go:

http://www.box.net/shared/4qschhd54u

for what its worth there seems to be many sorts of "official" cy styles. this was just one i picked out of a book at my career center cause i thought it looked nice. it must have fooled someone cause i got into a phd program