<p>Hello all,</p>
<p>I am working on updating my resume for submission to the MA programs to which I am applying. In order to include my relevant travel and research experiences (as well as not delete important professional and internship experiences), I would need to be at 2 1/2 pages. Is that too long? If so, what is an appropriate length?</p>
<p>In advance, thanks very much for your advice!</p>
<p>The advice I have seen seems to depend entirely on your field. Are you in humanities? science? professional?</p>
<p>What you are submitting for your applications is a curriculum vitae (it includes projects, grants, publications, conferences etc) rather than just a short work history and demographic info. It's okay that it is several pages in length.</p>
<p>Since you're doing this for graduate programs, it's actually a CV and should probably be 2-4 pages long after a BA/BS. I have a double-major BA with a year of post-UG experience and my CV that I've been submitting to Ph.D. programs is 3 1/2 pages and includes sections on education, conferences, publications, research experience (incl. in-progress), teaching experience, professional (related) experience, honors/awards/grants, professional associations, research interests, and relevant skills/qualifications/etc. You can find sample CVs of people in your field by looking at faculty websites. Also, I was fortunate enough to find one school I am applying to where they had posted some of the current students' CVs. I simply downloaded a few of those and used their layout as a guide in putting together my own CV.</p>
<p>On the other hand, for jobs, as a rule of thumb, resumes should not exceed 1 page (plus references) until one has earned at least one advanced or professional degree (i.e., MA/MS, Ph.D., JD, MD, etc.), at which point it may be up to 2 pages (beyond that and no one is likely to read it very thoroughly as it only gets scanned by a hiring manager/HR rep for about 20 secs at most companies anyway).</p>
<p>I do hope that others will not be intimidated by the length of apumic's CV.</p>
<p>Most students with a BA or MA have CVs of either one or two pages in length. Of course, I can only speak of students in the humanities.</p>
<p>Sorry, I didn't mean for that to sound intimidating. I based mine's length, detail and sections off of what I saw had been submitted by successful candidates to programs to which I applied. I am sure it varies greatly by area as well as many other things. And, honestly, length may or may not correlate with quality. I've noticed that it seems profs with many, many publications spend almost their entire CVs listing pubs whereas students and clinicians appear to use far more space to list other accomplishments (e.g., professional associations and professional experience).</p>
<p>Some examples of CVs that I used are can be found at: THE</a> PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT, Wichita State University</p>
<p>I didn't think apumic's cv length sounded intimidating. In the sciences, you can include summaries of projects as well as techniques. Once you throw in honors, awards, publications, conferences and whatnot, it isn't hard to fill lots of paper.</p>