Academic CV Template for Scholarship Applications

When to use this

Almost every master's and PhD scholarship asks for a CV: DAAD, Erasmus Mundus, Chevening, Commonwealth, Fulbright, MEXT, CSC, Stipendium Hungaricum and most university awards. A scholarship CV is not a job CV. Committees want to see your education first, then your research, teaching, work and service, in a format they can scan in under a minute.

Some programmes require a specific format. Erasmus Mundus and many European universities ask for the Europass CV, and some Chinese and Korean applications have their own forms. If the call names a format, use it. Otherwise, the template below works for almost everything.

What reviewers look for:

• Degrees with institution, dates, CGPA or percentage, and your thesis title
• Research experience, publications and conference presentations, if any
• Work experience described with results, not duties
• Awards, scholarships and positions of responsibility
• English test scores and skills relevant to the programme
• A clean layout: two pages at most for master's, three for PhD

The sample

AHMED RAZA KHAN Peshawar, Pakistan | [email address] | [+92 phone number] | [LinkedIn or Google Scholar link]

EDUCATION

BS Computer Science, University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Peshawar | 2020 to 2024 CGPA: 3.62/4.00 (top 10% of a class of 120) Final-year project: Detecting crop disease in wheat from smartphone images using lightweight neural networks (Supervisor: Dr [Name])

FSc Pre-Engineering, [College name], Peshawar | 2018 to 2020 1,021/1,100 (92.8%)

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Research Assistant, [Lab name], UET Peshawar | Aug 2024 to present

• Built a labelled dataset of 8,400 wheat leaf images collected with farmers in Charsadda and Mardan
• Trained and compared three mobile-friendly models; the best reached 91% accuracy on a held-out test set
• Co-wrote a conference paper (see Publications) and presented the work at [conference]

PUBLICATIONS

Khan, A. R., [Co-author], & [Supervisor]. (2025). Lightweight convolutional networks for wheat rust detection in field conditions. In Proceedings of [Conference name] (pp. [pages]). [Publisher]. [DOI]

WORK EXPERIENCE

Junior Software Engineer, [Company name], Islamabad (remote) | Jan 2024 to Jul 2024

• Developed two features for a farm-advisory mobile app used by about 15,000 farmers
• Reduced image upload failures on slow 3G connections by about 40% by compressing photos on the phone

TEACHING AND MENTORING

Teaching Assistant, Data Structures (two semesters, about 60 students each), UET Peshawar Volunteer coding instructor, [Organisation], 2022 to 2023: taught basic Python to 25 school students

AWARDS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

• HEC Need-Based Scholarship, 2020 to 2024
• Dean's Honour List, six semesters
• Second place, [National hackathon name], 2023

TEST SCORES

IELTS Academic: 7.5 overall (Listening 8.0, Reading 7.5, Writing 7.0, Speaking 7.0), [month, year]

SKILLS

Programming: Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow Lite, SQL | Tools: Git, Linux, LaTeX Languages: English (fluent), Urdu (native), Pashto (native)

REFEREES

Dr [Name], Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, UET Peshawar, [official email] Dr [Name], [title and institution], [official email]

How to adapt this

• Put education first unless you have more than five years of work experience, in which case work can come first for programmes like Chevening.
• Use reverse chronological order within each section: most recent first.
• Write results, not duties. "Reduced upload failures by 40%" is better than "responsible for app development".
• Give context to your grades. "Top 10% of a class of 120" or "Gold medal" helps a committee unfamiliar with Pakistani grading.
• Leave out personal details that are common on Pakistani CVs but not expected abroad: father's name, CNIC number, date of birth, religion, marital status and a photo. Include them only if the call asks for them.
• Match the CV to your motivation letter. Every project you mention in your letter should appear here too.
• Save as PDF with a clear file name, such as Ahmed_Raza_Khan_CV.pdf.
• For a Europass CV, use the official Europass editor, but keep the same content and the same focus on results.

Common mistakes

• An "Objective" paragraph at the top. It wastes space; your motivation letter does this job.
• Listing Microsoft Office, "hardworking" or "team player" as skills.
• Inconsistent dates and formats, which look careless.
• Five pages of certificates from short online courses. Keep only those relevant to your field.
• Unexplained gaps of more than six months. Add a line, or explain them in a study gap letter.
• Referees whose details do not match the people writing your recommendation letters.

See also the master's motivation letter sample and the PhD research proposal template.