Resume Tips for Medical Physics PhD Application

[math_major_111]

• General Tips on What to focus on, what to avoid?
• 3 Specific questions:

1. Should I keep it in ONE page?
2. I have been helping on a grant which has been approved by NIH, how much details of the project should I include in the resume: the detailed goal of the grant, grant number, etc?
3. Should I include volunteering experiences (community service), extracurricular activities (dance club) to show that I'm not a study machine?

 

[Choppy]

Should I keep it in ONE page?

Contact the specific departments you're applying to for format details and tailor the document as necessary. Generally in medical physics for professional positions you are not submitting a resume, but a curriculum vitae (CV) and these don't have a page limit (although you don't want them to go on forever either). The programs I have experience with are more of a "fill in the standard form" type.

I have been helping on a grant which has been approved by NIH, how much details of the project should I include in the resume: the detailed goal of the grant, grant number, etc?

For applicants to a PhD program they're not generally going to be too interested in the specifics of the grant itself. They're interested in the work that you've done on it, the skills that you've picked up, any kind of leadership role that you've played... that kind of thing.

Should I include volunteering experiences (community service), extracurricular activities (dance club) to show that I'm not a study machine?

These usually won't have much of a bearing on acceptance into a program or not. So if you're looking for things to cut, this would be it. That said, I personally think that it's important to have extra-curricular activities in there somewhere, because they're part of who you are and occasionally they can make a difference (depending on the details - dance club unlikely). The thing is, any parameter that will be formally evaluated *should* be specifically requested in the application.