If you want to learn how to write a top-notch resume that gets you admission and funding offers as a Nigerian graduate in your applications to US graduate schools, you’ve come to the right place.

#1. Your Name and Contact Information
Before a reader spends time by going deep into your resume, he/she wants to know a little bit about you. Not a full long story, but simply your name, address, phone and work email.

So how do you go about writing this on your resume?

First, let’s choose some good font options.

It’s best practice to stick to a 12-point font size using any of the following fonts in Microsoft Word (MS Word): Calibri, Cambria, Constantia, Corbel, Franklin Gothic, Georgia, Helvetica or Times New Roman.

Quick note: In this post, we’ll be writing a sample resume for an imaginary Nigerian graduate, John Adepoju, who completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Lagos State University (LASU).

John is currently on his NYSC program, and plans to go on to a US graduate school for a PhD in Computer Science.

#2. Education
Up next is the ‘Education’ section.

US Graduate school resume - Education section of resume - Nigerian graduate
The dates here are from September (09), 2016 to June (06), 2020.

You don’t need to add too much information here, just because it’ll look overwhelming and the reader might gloss over a key piece of information.

More importantly, you should have your GPA at the top under your ‘Education’ section. Eve if you think it’s low, don’t hide it. If your reader can’t see your GPA, they might think:

a) your GPA is so bad, you didn’t want to put it (which doesn’t bode well for your application), or

b) you just plainly forgot to put your GPA (in which case, they might be questioning if you often miss key information and don’t pay attention to key details.

So bottom line, put your GPA and the total GPA scale.

If you made a remarkable achievement related to your undergraduate education, you can put it here too. Examples of this include:

“Top 1% of graduating class.”
“Best Graduating Student in the Faculty of Science (1 out of 437 students).”
“Best Undergraduate Thesis Award (top 1% of undergraduate students).”
Just don’t stuff it with too many words or use more than one line.

Leave out your secondary school education, unless you achieved something truly world-class or international while in secondary school.

Okay, you’ve introduced yourself and touched on your undergraduate education background. Now it’s time to focus on your research output and experiences.

#3 Your Final Year Project
Still under your ‘Education’ section, add your final year thesis or project by listing the topic of your thesis and major professor who supervised your work.

Although we’ll be going deeper into your research achievements in the next three sections, if the major success you’ve achieved as a researcher is your final year thesis, definitely include it under the undergraduate portion of your ‘Education’ section.

As we go on, you’ll be able to expand more on the details of the thesis under your ‘Research Experience.’

That said, the next three sections (#3, #4 and #5) will be focused on your research background and how far you’ve developed it up until now.

First, we’ll talk about the research publications that you’ve produced. Then, move on to the research conferences you’ve presented in and round it up with the specific research experience you’ve gained as an undergraduate.

The next three sections are, by far, the most important sections of your resume, if your goal is to get into research-based MS and PhD programs in the US.

And contrary to what you might think, you probably have more research experience than you think.

But first, let’s start with publications, which are arguably the toughest type of research products to have.

#4. Publications
Although your final year thesis describes the output of your research, it doesn’t count as a research publication.

Here’s why.

A research publication is a research work that has been peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

“Peer-reviewed” means experts in your discipline, apart from you and the team that did the research, have examined the research work and deem it fit to be published in a journal related to your research.

If you have research publications that have undergone this process, this is the part of your resume where you put those publications.

There are different format styles out there on how to cite your publications in your resume. Some of them are the APA, MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, IEEE Style, etc.

Take a look at this website for more information on the various citing and format styles.

For this resume, we’ll be using the APA style. That is:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number), pages.

Each field has its own accepted formatting styles, so feel free to find out the style for your discipline.

Once we add those publications to the resume, it looks like this:

US Graduate school resume - Publications - Nigerian graduate
Take, for instance, the first publication:

Omoege, P.K., Adepoju, J.T., and Tamiloni, U.G. were the three authors of this publication
Since this is John Adepoju’s resume, his name is in bold letters
The paper was published in 2018
The title of the paper is: “Effect of language dynamics on developers’ productivity: a theoretical analysis.”
The name of the peer-reviewed journal is Programming Tools of volume number 65, issue number 1
The paper ran from pages 1149 to 1162 in the journal.

#5. Conferences
Next, add the list of conferences where your research has been featured (either as the presenter/lead author or featured author).

#6. Research Experience
If you’ve not been able to publish peer-reviewed research papers or presented at research conferences, then this is your chance to remedy the situation.

To be clear, this section (Research Experience) is no substitute for the last two sections (Publications and Conferences).

Therefore, if you’re coming up short on the last two sections, then you want to use this section of your resume show graduate admission committees that you can do research.

I definitely did not have any published paper nor had I presented at any conferences prior to applying to US schools, yet I focused particularly on this section to outline my research experiences.

This, alongside other parts of my application, helped ensure that I got accepted into my choice school with funding.

So what activities count as research experience?

Here are some of them:

-Your final year project
-Short-term research projects with your professors
-Self-directed research projects

How do you talk about each of these on your graduate school resume?

For instance, if your professor’s research focuses on bio fuels and alternative energy, you can use the Bio fuel and Alternative Energy Group. This serves as a way to help your reader understand the central research theme of the lab where you worked.

It also distinguishes your research lab and work from those of other students in the same department.

-Short-term research projects with your professors
Apart from your final year project, you can also take initiative and ask to work with your professors on a research project that they’re working on.

To use this approach, you’d need to be proactive and not wait for the professor to choose you or contact you for the research.

Simply identify a few professors in your department whose research sound interesting to you. Then, send each one an email to schedule a time/appointment for you to visit them in their office to talk about their research, and how you can possibly help.

Most professors will be willing to take you on, but if you don’t get a yes right away, don’t give up. Keep asking. More importantly, demonstrate to the professors that you’re actually very serious and passionate about their research, and that you’re reliable to work with.

This is very important. No professor wants to get his hopes up about a student who wanted to work with them so much. And then, when the actual work starts and challenges come, the student gets discouraged and just flatly absconds or start doing sloppy work.

This kind of research experience helps you develop the kind of thick skin that comes with doing research work, as opposed to taking classes for higher grades. It also helps you form a more closer bond with the professor. You never know what future opportunities may open up for you this way – for instance, the professor might end being the one to highly recommend your excellent work ethic and research prowess for that much needed Letter of Recommendation.

You want to take a similar approach. Start contacting professors and working on these types of projects, starting from your second year in university.

If you can gain experiences every year for the next three or four years till you graduate, you’d have learnt a lot, gained more research experience and have a lot more to talk about when it’s time to apply to US graduate schools.

-Self-directed research projects
Another way to gain valuable research experience is to personally develop new ways to tackle the problems in your field. It’s easier to do this in some fields (e.g. some aspects of computer science, physical chemistry, etc.) than others.

But if you can, try working on this. You might come up with a research idea and team up with two or three peers to work on it.

It might also be helpful to have a professor serve as an occasional research advisor – to help you get unstuck when you run into challenges. It might be more challenging to gain some valuable experience from this, as it’s easier to get discouraged during the early parts of the process.

But if you can push past those stages and come up with a decent research output, you’d have learnt a lot about yourself and the research from the adventure.

Among these three areas (your final-year project, short term research projects with your professors, and self-directed research projects), five or six research projects is definitely doable.

Would it be easy? No.

Can it be done? Yes.

Other areas where you can gain research experience
If you’d like to know of more ways to gain that coveted research experience, here are some other ways to do it:

-Class-based research projects
Research projects during the holidays
Research internships
Research-based projects during your industrial training (SWEP, SIWES, etc.)

#7. Skills
What relevant skills have you developed throughout the course of your undergraduate education?

These include the specific skills you gained from:

-Your research projects
-Your classes and class projects
-Your personal projects
-Teaching others
-Campus leadership
-General life skills

Each field has specific skills that matter more than others, and so, you’d be the best judge of the kinds of valuable skills you can use to market your candidacy to graduate school admission committees.

That said, there are certain skills that will set you apart as the world inches closer to new and disruptive technologies, ideas and ways of innovation.

For instance, persuasive writing, public speaking, project management and coding (regardless of your field) are some of the rare and valuable skills that you’d want to start developing.

As you brainstorm on what to write for this section, ask yourself:

-What personal or class projects have I completed due to my coding skills?
-What relevant skills have I gained from my classes?
-Have I helped a professor teach an undergraduate class as a teaching assistant?
-Have I built a personal project using one or more programming languages?
-Have I led my class, department or university as a student leader in any capacity?
-In what ways have I intentionally pursued my interests, e.g. cycling, graphic design, running, starting a business, marketing, Excel, etc.)

An efficient way to learn these skills is to use the project-based learning approach.

That is, don’t spend six months or a year on learning all there’s to know about, for instance, Adobe Illustrator.

Rather, pick a project that would demand that you know Adobe Illustrator. Examples are creating a vector radiator artwork, an info graphic, or illustrating a pineapple. See this website for more inspiration on possible projects you can do with Adobe Illustrator.

Then, spend time on that one project to do the best job you can possibly do. Take hand-written notes on what you’re learning, creating a mini-tutorial for you to refer to in the future. Once you’re done, that’s your first project in your portfolio. Pick your next project. Do the same.

The more projects you work on, the more excited you become about starting a new one – the more you learn and build up your skill set.

#8. Work Experience

This is the section where you put all experience (paid or unpaid) that are not research-related.

Examples include your:

-National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) work experience
-Industry experience
-Internships
-Personal projects or side businesses

If you’re currently working, feel free to add both your present work and NYSC experience to this section. Note: Your NYSC experience is not required for US graduate school admissions. But if you can go for your NYSC, you should go.

Living in a new city, and possibly a new state, for a whole year teaches you things you won’t necessarily learn in a standard academic setting, either in Nigeria or the US.

And seeing the standard of education in some parts of the country would put things into perspective. You’d realize although you might not have had everything you wanted in your undergraduate education, some Nigerian students have it worse.

More so, you can pick up a new languages, eat new foods, and meet interesting people who don’t necessarily have your level of education, but are remarkably exceptional and talented humans.

#9. Awards

Here, create a list of your awards, and select the most impressive of those.

Think of:

-Graduation or convocation awards (at the levels of your university, faculty, and/or department)
-Research fellowships or funding
-Scholarships
-Prestigious national, state or regional qualifying competitions

Since your readers may not be familiar with the top awards, scholarships or fellowships in Nigeria, make sure you qualify each award. For example, “Best graduating student in the Faculty of Agriculture (1 out of 355 students).”

#10. References
This section will contain your list of professional references.

Often, this list would consist of professors who know you well and can speak to your top-notch drive, ambition and initiative with a potential to do excellent research.

The people you can list here might include:

-Your professor for your final year research project
-The professors you’ve worked with on research projects
-The ideal situation here is to have three professors that can speak very well to your stellar research abilities.

If you’re unable to find professors for all three places in your resume, then you can put an industry professional who knows you well and can attest to your drive and go-getter attitude towards work.

Proofread and Polish
Once you’ve gotten to this point, take a break. Let your resume sit for a day or two. This will help you clear your mind and easily notice any mistakes or errors in your resume, when you come back to it.

Return to the resume, this time, reading through each line for errors in grammar, semantics, or syntax. Put yourself in the shows of a reader who has only 5 seconds to decide on your resume – to keep or to trash.

Then be ruthless in what you cut out. Remove dull, lifeless words. Convey your point in fewer words. Leave enough white space between sections for easy scanning and readability. Then get your professors, mentor or experienced friend to take a look.

Start writing your resume
Yes, this article goes deep into each section of your graduate school resume. It shows you how to start writing your resume as a:

-Nigerian undergraduate, preparing to graduate
-Nigerian graduate, currently on NYSC
-Nigerian graduate, presently working, or
-Nigerian MSc graduate, looking at options for a PhD

But you’d need to actually start writing in order to get the real benefit out of this guide.

That way, you can craft a resume that gets you admitted with funding at your chosen US graduate schools.

Download Graduate School Resume template: https://beyondbsc.com/write-resume-nigerian-graduates/

Post: https://beyondbsc.com/write-resume-nigerian-graduates/

Check out more useful articles on MS & PhD graduate school admissions in the U.S.: https://thenaija.us/ms-phd-us/

Cc: Lalasticlala & Mynd44.

thenaijaus:
If you want to learn how to write a top-notch resume that gets you admission and funding offers as a Nigerian graduate in your applications to US graduate schools, you’ve come to the right place.

#1. Your Name and Contact Information
Before a reader spends time by going deep into your resume, he/she wants to know a little bit about you. Not a full long story, but simply your name, address, phone and work email.

So how do you go about writing this on your resume?

First, let’s choose some good font options.

It’s best practice to stick to a 12-point font size using any of the following fonts in Microsoft Word (MS Word): Calibri, Cambria, Constantia, Corbel, Franklin Gothic, Georgia, Helvetica or Times New Roman.

Quick note: In this post, we’ll be writing a sample resume for an imaginary Nigerian graduate, John Adepoju, who completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Lagos State University (LASU).

John is currently on his NYSC program, and plans to go on to a US graduate school for a PhD in Computer Science.

#2. Education
Up next is the ‘Education’ section.

US Graduate school resume - Education section of resume - Nigerian graduate
The dates here are from September (09), 2016 to June (06), 2020.

You don’t need to add too much information here, just because it’ll look overwhelming and the reader might gloss over a key piece of information.

More importantly, you should have your GPA at the top under your ‘Education’ section. Eve if you think it’s low, don’t hide it. If your reader can’t see your GPA, they might think:

a) your GPA is so bad, you didn’t want to put it (which doesn’t bode well for your application), or

b) you just plainly forgot to put your GPA (in which case, they might be questioning if you often miss key information and don’t pay attention to key details.

So bottom line, put your GPA and the total GPA scale.

If you made a remarkable achievement related to your undergraduate education, you can put it here too. Examples of this include:

“Top 1% of graduating class.”
“Best Graduating Student in the Faculty of Science (1 out of 437 students).”
“Best Undergraduate Thesis Award (top 1% of undergraduate students).”
Just don’t stuff it with too many words or use more than one line.

Leave out your secondary school education, unless you achieved something truly world-class or international while in secondary school.

Okay, you’ve introduced yourself and touched on your undergraduate education background. Now it’s time to focus on your research output and experiences.

#3 Your Final Year Project
Still under your ‘Education’ section, add your final year thesis or project by listing the topic of your thesis and major professor who supervised your work.

Although we’ll be going deeper into your research achievements in the next three sections, if the major success you’ve achieved as a researcher is your final year thesis, definitely include it under the undergraduate portion of your ‘Education’ section.

As we go on, you’ll be able to expand more on the details of the thesis under your ‘Research Experience.’

That said, the next three sections (#3, #4 and #5) will be focused on your research background and how far you’ve developed it up until now.

First, we’ll talk about the research publications that you’ve produced. Then, move on to the research conferences you’ve presented in and round it up with the specific research experience you’ve gained as an undergraduate.

The next three sections are, by far, the most important sections of your resume, if your goal is to get into research-based MS and PhD programs in the US.

And contrary to what you might think, you probably have more research experience than you think.

But first, let’s start with publications, which are arguably the toughest type of research products to have.

#4. Publications
Although your final year thesis describes the output of your research, it doesn’t count as a research publication.

Here’s why.

A research publication is a research work that has been peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

“Peer-reviewed” means experts in your discipline, apart from you and the team that did the research, have examined the research work and deem it fit to be published in a journal related to your research.

If you have research publications that have undergone this process, this is the part of your resume where you put those publications.

There are different format styles out there on how to cite your publications in your resume. Some of them are the APA, MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, IEEE Style, etc.

Take a look at this website for more information on the various citing and format styles.

For this resume, we’ll be using the APA style. That is:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number), pages.

Each field has its own accepted formatting styles, so feel free to find out the style for your discipline.

Once we add those publications to the resume, it looks like this:

US Graduate school resume - Publications - Nigerian graduate
Take, for instance, the first publication:

Omoege, P.K., Adepoju, J.T., and Tamiloni, U.G. were the three authors of this publication
Since this is John Adepoju’s resume, his name is in bold letters
The paper was published in 2018
The title of the paper is: “Effect of language dynamics on developers’ productivity: a theoretical analysis.”
The name of the peer-reviewed journal is Programming Tools of volume number 65, issue number 1
The paper ran from pages 1149 to 1162 in the journal.

#5. Conferences
Next, add the list of conferences where your research has been featured (either as the presenter/lead author or featured author).

#6. Research Experience
If you’ve not been able to publish peer-reviewed research papers or presented at research conferences, then this is your chance to remedy the situation.

To be clear, this section (Research Experience) is no substitute for the last two sections (Publications and Conferences).

Therefore, if you’re coming up short on the last two sections, then you want to use this section of your resume show graduate admission committees that you can do research.

I definitely did not have any published paper nor had I presented at any conferences prior to applying to US schools, yet I focused particularly on this section to outline my research experiences.

This, alongside other parts of my application, helped ensure that I got accepted into my choice school with funding.

So what activities count as research experience?

Here are some of them:

-Your final year project
-Short-term research projects with your professors
-Self-directed research projects

How do you talk about each of these on your graduate school resume?

For instance, if your professor’s research focuses on bio fuels and alternative energy, you can use the Bio fuel and Alternative Energy Group. This serves as a way to help your reader understand the central research theme of the lab where you worked.

It also distinguishes your research lab and work from those of other students in the same department.

-Short-term research projects with your professors
Apart from your final year project, you can also take initiative and ask to work with your professors on a research project that they’re working on.

To use this approach, you’d need to be proactive and not wait for the professor to choose you or contact you for the research.

Simply identify a few professors in your department whose research sound interesting to you. Then, send each one an email to schedule a time/appointment for you to visit them in their office to talk about their research, and how you can possibly help.

Most professors will be willing to take you on, but if you don’t get a yes right away, don’t give up. Keep asking. More importantly, demonstrate to the professors that you’re actually very serious and passionate about their research, and that you’re reliable to work with.

This is very important. No professor wants to get his hopes up about a student who wanted to work with them so much. And then, when the actual work starts and challenges come, the student gets discouraged and just flatly absconds or start doing sloppy work.

This kind of research experience helps you develop the kind of thick skin that comes with doing research work, as opposed to taking classes for higher grades. It also helps you form a more closer bond with the professor. You never know what future opportunities may open up for you this way – for instance, the professor might end being the one to highly recommend your excellent work ethic and research prowess for that much needed Letter of Recommendation.

You want to take a similar approach. Start contacting professors and working on these types of projects, starting from your second year in university.

If you can gain experiences every year for the next three or four years till you graduate, you’d have learnt a lot, gained more research experience and have a lot more to talk about when it’s time to apply to US graduate schools.

-Self-directed research projects
Another way to gain valuable research experience is to personally develop new ways to tackle the problems in your field. It’s easier to do this in some fields (e.g. some aspects of computer science, physical chemistry, etc.) than others.

But if you can, try working on this. You might come up with a research idea and team up with two or three peers to work on it.

It might also be helpful to have a professor serve as an occasional research advisor – to help you get unstuck when you run into challenges. It might be more challenging to gain some valuable experience from this, as it’s easier to get discouraged during the early parts of the process.

But if you can push past those stages and come up with a decent research output, you’d have learnt a lot about yourself and the research from the adventure.

Among these three areas (your final-year project, short term research projects with your professors, and self-directed research projects), five or six research projects is definitely doable.

Would it be easy? No.

Can it be done? Yes.

Other areas where you can gain research experience
If you’d like to know of more ways to gain that coveted research experience, here are some other ways to do it:

-Class-based research projects
Research projects during the holidays
Research internships
Research-based projects during your industrial training (SWEP, SIWES, etc.)

#7. Skills
What relevant skills have you developed throughout the course of your undergraduate education?

These include the specific skills you gained from:

-Your research projects
-Your classes and class projects
-Your personal projects
-Teaching others
-Campus leadership
-General life skills

Each field has specific skills that matter more than others, and so, you’d be the best judge of the kinds of valuable skills you can use to market your candidacy to graduate school admission committees.

That said, there are certain skills that will set you apart as the world inches closer to new and disruptive technologies, ideas and ways of innovation.

For instance, persuasive writing, public speaking, project management and coding (regardless of your field) are some of the rare and valuable skills that you’d want to start developing.

As you brainstorm on what to write for this section, ask yourself:

-What personal or class projects have I completed due to my coding skills?
-What relevant skills have I gained from my classes?
-Have I helped a professor teach an undergraduate class as a teaching assistant?
-Have I built a personal project using one or more programming languages?
-Have I led my class, department or university as a student leader in any capacity?
-In what ways have I intentionally pursued my interests, e.g. cycling, graphic design, running, starting a business, marketing, Excel, etc.)

An efficient way to learn these skills is to use the project-based learning approach.

That is, don’t spend six months or a year on learning all there’s to know about, for instance, Adobe Illustrator.

Rather, pick a project that would demand that you know Adobe Illustrator. Examples are creating a vector radiator artwork, an info graphic, or illustrating a pineapple. See this website for more inspiration on possible projects you can do with Adobe Illustrator.

Then, spend time on that one project to do the best job you can possibly do. Take hand-written notes on what you’re learning, creating a mini-tutorial for you to refer to in the future. Once you’re done, that’s your first project in your portfolio. Pick your next project. Do the same.

The more projects you work on, the more excited you become about starting a new one – the more you learn and build up your skill set.

#8. Work Experience

This is the section where you put all experience (paid or unpaid) that are not research-related.

Examples include your:

-National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) work experience
-Industry experience
-Internships
-Personal projects or side businesses

If you’re currently working, feel free to add both your present work and NYSC experience to this section. Note: Your NYSC experience is not required for US graduate school admissions. But if you can go for your NYSC, you should go.

Living in a new city, and possibly a new state, for a whole year teaches you things you won’t necessarily learn in a standard academic setting, either in Nigeria or the US.

And seeing the standard of education in some parts of the country would put things into perspective. You’d realize although you might not have had everything you wanted in your undergraduate education, some Nigerian students have it worse.

More so, you can pick up a new languages, eat new foods, and meet interesting people who don’t necessarily have your level of education, but are remarkably exceptional and talented humans.

#9. Awards

Here, create a list of your awards, and select the most impressive of those.

Think of:

-Graduation or convocation awards (at the levels of your university, faculty, and/or department)
-Research fellowships or funding
-Scholarships
-Prestigious national, state or regional qualifying competitions

Since your readers may not be familiar with the top awards, scholarships or fellowships in Nigeria, make sure you qualify each award. For example, “Best graduating student in the Faculty of Agriculture (1 out of 355 students).”

#10. References
This section will contain your list of professional references.

Often, this list would consist of professors who know you well and can speak to your top-notch drive, ambition and initiative with a potential to do excellent research.

The people you can list here might include:

-Your professor for your final year research project
-The professors you’ve worked with on research projects
-The ideal situation here is to have three professors that can speak very well to your stellar research abilities.

If you’re unable to find professors for all three places in your resume, then you can put an industry professional who knows you well and can attest to your drive and go-getter attitude towards work.

Proofread and Polish
Once you’ve gotten to this point, take a break. Let your resume sit for a day or two. This will help you clear your mind and easily notice any mistakes or errors in your resume, when you come back to it.

Return to the resume, this time, reading through each line for errors in grammar, semantics, or syntax. Put yourself in the shows of a reader who has only 5 seconds to decide on your resume – to keep or to trash.

Then be ruthless in what you cut out. Remove dull, lifeless words. Convey your point in fewer words. Leave enough white space between sections for easy scanning and readability. Then get your professors, mentor or experienced friend to take a look.

Start writing your resume
Yes, this article goes deep into each section of your graduate school resume. It shows you how to start writing your resume as a:

-Nigerian undergraduate, preparing to graduate
-Nigerian graduate, currently on NYSC
-Nigerian graduate, presently working, or
-Nigerian MSc graduate, looking at options for a PhD

But you’d need to actually start writing in order to get the real benefit out of this guide.

That way, you can craft a resume that gets you admitted with funding at your chosen US graduate schools.

Download Graduate School Resume template: https://beyondbsc.com/write-resume-nigerian-graduates/

Post: https://beyondbsc.com/write-resume-nigerian-graduates/

Check out more useful articles on MS & PhD graduate school admissions in the U.S.: https://thenaija.us/ms-phd-us/

Cc: Lalasticlala & Mynd44.

Nice piece.


Please can I get the template ? Thank you.

thenaijaus:
If you want to learn how to write a top-notch resume that gets you admission and funding offers as a Nigerian graduate in your applications to US graduate schools, you’ve come to the right place.

#1. Your Name and Contact Information
Before a reader spends time by going deep into your resume, he/she wants to know a little bit about you. Not a full long story, but simply your name, address, phone and work email.

So how do you go about writing this on your resume?

First, let’s choose some good font options.

It’s best practice to stick to a 12-point font size using any of the following fonts in Microsoft Word (MS Word): Calibri, Cambria, Constantia, Corbel, Franklin Gothic, Georgia, Helvetica or Times New Roman.

Quick note: In this post, we’ll be writing a sample resume for an imaginary Nigerian graduate, John Adepoju, who completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Lagos State University (LASU).

John is currently on his NYSC program, and plans to go on to a US graduate school for a PhD in Computer Science.

#2. Education
Up next is the ‘Education’ section.

US Graduate school resume - Education section of resume - Nigerian graduate
The dates here are from September (09), 2016 to June (06), 2020.

You don’t need to add too much information here, just because it’ll look overwhelming and the reader might gloss over a key piece of information.

More importantly, you should have your GPA at the top under your ‘Education’ section. Eve if you think it’s low, don’t hide it. If your reader can’t see your GPA, they might think:

a) your GPA is so bad, you didn’t want to put it (which doesn’t bode well for your application), or

b) you just plainly forgot to put your GPA (in which case, they might be questioning if you often miss key information and don’t pay attention to key details.

So bottom line, put your GPA and the total GPA scale.

If you made a remarkable achievement related to your undergraduate education, you can put it here too. Examples of this include:

“Top 1% of graduating class.”
“Best Graduating Student in the Faculty of Science (1 out of 437 students).”
“Best Undergraduate Thesis Award (top 1% of undergraduate students).”
Just don’t stuff it with too many words or use more than one line.

Leave out your secondary school education, unless you achieved something truly world-class or international while in secondary school.

Okay, you’ve introduced yourself and touched on your undergraduate education background. Now it’s time to focus on your research output and experiences.

#3 Your Final Year Project
Still under your ‘Education’ section, add your final year thesis or project by listing the topic of your thesis and major professor who supervised your work.

Although we’ll be going deeper into your research achievements in the next three sections, if the major success you’ve achieved as a researcher is your final year thesis, definitely include it under the undergraduate portion of your ‘Education’ section.

As we go on, you’ll be able to expand more on the details of the thesis under your ‘Research Experience.’

That said, the next three sections (#3, #4 and #5) will be focused on your research background and how far you’ve developed it up until now.

First, we’ll talk about the research publications that you’ve produced. Then, move on to the research conferences you’ve presented in and round it up with the specific research experience you’ve gained as an undergraduate.

The next three sections are, by far, the most important sections of your resume, if your goal is to get into research-based MS and PhD programs in the US.

And contrary to what you might think, you probably have more research experience than you think.

But first, let’s start with publications, which are arguably the toughest type of research products to have.

#4. Publications
Although your final year thesis describes the output of your research, it doesn’t count as a research publication.

Here’s why.

A research publication is a research work that has been peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal.

“Peer-reviewed” means experts in your discipline, apart from you and the team that did the research, have examined the research work and deem it fit to be published in a journal related to your research.

If you have research publications that have undergone this process, this is the part of your resume where you put those publications.

There are different format styles out there on how to cite your publications in your resume. Some of them are the APA, MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, IEEE Style, etc.

Take a look at this website for more information on the various citing and format styles.

For this resume, we’ll be using the APA style. That is:

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number (issue number), pages.

Each field has its own accepted formatting styles, so feel free to find out the style for your discipline.

Once we add those publications to the resume, it looks like this:

US Graduate school resume - Publications - Nigerian graduate
Take, for instance, the first publication:

Omoege, P.K., Adepoju, J.T., and Tamiloni, U.G. were the three authors of this publication
Since this is John Adepoju’s resume, his name is in bold letters
The paper was published in 2018
The title of the paper is: “Effect of language dynamics on developers’ productivity: a theoretical analysis.”
The name of the peer-reviewed journal is Programming Tools of volume number 65, issue number 1
The paper ran from pages 1149 to 1162 in the journal.

#5. Conferences
Next, add the list of conferences where your research has been featured (either as the presenter/lead author or featured author).

#6. Research Experience
If you’ve not been able to publish peer-reviewed research papers or presented at research conferences, then this is your chance to remedy the situation.

To be clear, this section (Research Experience) is no substitute for the last two sections (Publications and Conferences).

Therefore, if you’re coming up short on the last two sections, then you want to use this section of your resume show graduate admission committees that you can do research.

I definitely did not have any published paper nor had I presented at any conferences prior to applying to US schools, yet I focused particularly on this section to outline my research experiences.

This, alongside other parts of my application, helped ensure that I got accepted into my choice school with funding.

So what activities count as research experience?

Here are some of them:

-Your final year project
-Short-term research projects with your professors
-Self-directed research projects

How do you talk about each of these on your graduate school resume?

For instance, if your professor’s research focuses on bio fuels and alternative energy, you can use the Bio fuel and Alternative Energy Group. This serves as a way to help your reader understand the central research theme of the lab where you worked.

It also distinguishes your research lab and work from those of other students in the same department.

-Short-term research projects with your professors
Apart from your final year project, you can also take initiative and ask to work with your professors on a research project that they’re working on.

To use this approach, you’d need to be proactive and not wait for the professor to choose you or contact you for the research.

Simply identify a few professors in your department whose research sound interesting to you. Then, send each one an email to schedule a time/appointment for you to visit them in their office to talk about their research, and how you can possibly help.

Most professors will be willing to take you on, but if you don’t get a yes right away, don’t give up. Keep asking. More importantly, demonstrate to the professors that you’re actually very serious and passionate about their research, and that you’re reliable to work with.

This is very important. No professor wants to get his hopes up about a student who wanted to work with them so much. And then, when the actual work starts and challenges come, the student gets discouraged and just flatly absconds or start doing sloppy work.

This kind of research experience helps you develop the kind of thick skin that comes with doing research work, as opposed to taking classes for higher grades. It also helps you form a more closer bond with the professor. You never know what future opportunities may open up for you this way – for instance, the professor might end being the one to highly recommend your excellent work ethic and research prowess for that much needed Letter of Recommendation.

You want to take a similar approach. Start contacting professors and working on these types of projects, starting from your second year in university.

If you can gain experiences every year for the next three or four years till you graduate, you’d have learnt a lot, gained more research experience and have a lot more to talk about when it’s time to apply to US graduate schools.

-Self-directed research projects
Another way to gain valuable research experience is to personally develop new ways to tackle the problems in your field. It’s easier to do this in some fields (e.g. some aspects of computer science, physical chemistry, etc.) than others.

But if you can, try working on this. You might come up with a research idea and team up with two or three peers to work on it.

It might also be helpful to have a professor serve as an occasional research advisor – to help you get unstuck when you run into challenges. It might be more challenging to gain some valuable experience from this, as it’s easier to get discouraged during the early parts of the process.

But if you can push past those stages and come up with a decent research output, you’d have learnt a lot about yourself and the research from the adventure.

Among these three areas (your final-year project, short term research projects with your professors, and self-directed research projects), five or six research projects is definitely doable.

Would it be easy? No.

Can it be done? Yes.

Other areas where you can gain research experience
If you’d like to know of more ways to gain that coveted research experience, here are some other ways to do it:

-Class-based research projects
Research projects during the holidays
Research internships
Research-based projects during your industrial training (SWEP, SIWES, etc.)

#7. Skills
What relevant skills have you developed throughout the course of your undergraduate education?

These include the specific skills you gained from:

-Your research projects
-Your classes and class projects
-Your personal projects
-Teaching others
-Campus leadership
-General life skills

Each field has specific skills that matter more than others, and so, you’d be the best judge of the kinds of valuable skills you can use to market your candidacy to graduate school admission committees.

That said, there are certain skills that will set you apart as the world inches closer to new and disruptive technologies, ideas and ways of innovation.

For instance, persuasive writing, public speaking, project management and coding (regardless of your field) are some of the rare and valuable skills that you’d want to start developing.

As you brainstorm on what to write for this section, ask yourself:

-What personal or class projects have I completed due to my coding skills?
-What relevant skills have I gained from my classes?
-Have I helped a professor teach an undergraduate class as a teaching assistant?
-Have I built a personal project using one or more programming languages?
-Have I led my class, department or university as a student leader in any capacity?
-In what ways have I intentionally pursued my interests, e.g. cycling, graphic design, running, starting a business, marketing, Excel, etc.)

An efficient way to learn these skills is to use the project-based learning approach.

That is, don’t spend six months or a year on learning all there’s to know about, for instance, Adobe Illustrator.

Rather, pick a project that would demand that you know Adobe Illustrator. Examples are creating a vector radiator artwork, an info graphic, or illustrating a pineapple. See this website for more inspiration on possible projects you can do with Adobe Illustrator.

Then, spend time on that one project to do the best job you can possibly do. Take hand-written notes on what you’re learning, creating a mini-tutorial for you to refer to in the future. Once you’re done, that’s your first project in your portfolio. Pick your next project. Do the same.

The more projects you work on, the more excited you become about starting a new one – the more you learn and build up your skill set.

#8. Work Experience

This is the section where you put all experience (paid or unpaid) that are not research-related.

Examples include your:

-National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) work experience
-Industry experience
-Internships
-Personal projects or side businesses

If you’re currently working, feel free to add both your present work and NYSC experience to this section. Note: Your NYSC experience is not required for US graduate school admissions. But if you can go for your NYSC, you should go.

Living in a new city, and possibly a new state, for a whole year teaches you things you won’t necessarily learn in a standard academic setting, either in Nigeria or the US.

And seeing the standard of education in some parts of the country would put things into perspective. You’d realize although you might not have had everything you wanted in your undergraduate education, some Nigerian students have it worse.

More so, you can pick up a new languages, eat new foods, and meet interesting people who don’t necessarily have your level of education, but are remarkably exceptional and talented humans.

#9. Awards

Here, create a list of your awards, and select the most impressive of those.

Think of:

-Graduation or convocation awards (at the levels of your university, faculty, and/or department)
-Research fellowships or funding
-Scholarships
-Prestigious national, state or regional qualifying competitions

Since your readers may not be familiar with the top awards, scholarships or fellowships in Nigeria, make sure you qualify each award. For example, “Best graduating student in the Faculty of Agriculture (1 out of 355 students).”

#10. References
This section will contain your list of professional references.

Often, this list would consist of professors who know you well and can speak to your top-notch drive, ambition and initiative with a potential to do excellent research.

The people you can list here might include:

-Your professor for your final year research project
-The professors you’ve worked with on research projects
-The ideal situation here is to have three professors that can speak very well to your stellar research abilities.

If you’re unable to find professors for all three places in your resume, then you can put an industry professional who knows you well and can attest to your drive and go-getter attitude towards work.

Proofread and Polish
Once you’ve gotten to this point, take a break. Let your resume sit for a day or two. This will help you clear your mind and easily notice any mistakes or errors in your resume, when you come back to it.

Return to the resume, this time, reading through each line for errors in grammar, semantics, or syntax. Put yourself in the shows of a reader who has only 5 seconds to decide on your resume – to keep or to trash.

Then be ruthless in what you cut out. Remove dull, lifeless words. Convey your point in fewer words. Leave enough white space between sections for easy scanning and readability. Then get your professors, mentor or experienced friend to take a look.

Start writing your resume
Yes, this article goes deep into each section of your graduate school resume. It shows you how to start writing your resume as a:

-Nigerian undergraduate, preparing to graduate
-Nigerian graduate, currently on NYSC
-Nigerian graduate, presently working, or
-Nigerian MSc graduate, looking at options for a PhD

But you’d need to actually start writing in order to get the real benefit out of this guide.

That way, you can craft a resume that gets you admitted with funding at your chosen US graduate schools.

Download Graduate School Resume template: https://beyondbsc.com/write-resume-nigerian-graduates/

Post: https://beyondbsc.com/write-resume-nigerian-graduates/

Check out more useful articles on MS & PhD graduate school admissions in the U.S.: https://thenaija.us/ms-phd-us/

Cc: Lalasticlala & Mynd44.

Nice piece
Pls can I get the template?