Download CV Template for Undergraduate Admissions

Description

In short: Undergraduate admissions officers spend well under a minute on a CV. This template gives you a one-page structure that puts your strongest evidence in the top third, and shows you how to fill the page convincingly when you have not held a formal job yet.

Who this is for

School leavers and Year 12 students applying to bachelor’s degrees — in Australia, and to the UK, USA, Canada, Ireland and Germany. If you are applying for a Master’s or PhD, use the graduate version instead; the two documents are read very differently.

What’s inside the file

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One-page structure

Section order tuned for undergraduate review, with Year 12, your ATAR and any VET study laid out the way Australian admissions centres expect, and spacing already set.

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No-experience playbook

How to build a credible CV from school projects, olympiads, competitions, volunteering, tutoring and part-time work.

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Wording examples

Before-and-after lines showing how to describe impact rather than list duties.

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Final checklist

A short pass to run before you submit, covering formatting, file naming and contact details.

The mistake almost every undergraduate CV makes

It repeats the transcript. Your marks are already in your academic record — an admissions officer does not need them again in list form. The CV exists to show what you did outside the mark sheet: what you built, organised, led, taught or competed in. That is the part no other document in your application covers.

A useful test: cover your name and grades. Does what remains still describe a specific person? If it could belong to any student in your class, the CV is not doing its job yet.

How to use it

1Fill every section roughly, without editing. Get it all down first.
2Cut anything that repeats your transcript or personal statement.
3Rewrite each remaining line to lead with what changed because you were involved.
4Trim to one page, then run the checklist at the end of the file.

Frequently asked

Do undergraduate applications even need a CV?

Not always. UCAS and the Common App do not ask for one, but many universities in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UAE do, and scholarship panels almost always request one. It is also what you send when you approach a professor or a summer programme.

What if I have nothing to put in it?

You have more than you think. School projects, a class position, coaching a junior team, running an Instagram page for a cause, a coding course you finished, family business work — these all count when described properly. The file has a section devoted to exactly this.

Should it be one page or two?

One. At undergraduate level a second page reads as padding, and the strongest material gets pushed below where anyone looks.