Template 01
The Harvard CV
Academic rigour, chronological clarity. The format the Harvard Career Services team teaches.
For academic, policy, and top-tier consulting applications
SARAH L. CHEN
14 Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge CB3 9DA · +44 7712 345 678 · s.chen@cantab.ac.uk
Education
- Dissertation: “Credit Allocation and Regional Industry in Post-War Britain” (Distinction expected).
- Relevant coursework: Applied Econometrics, Economic Geography, Financial History.
- Cambridge Trust Scholarship.
- Awarded the Lionel Robbins Prize for best dissertation in economic theory.
- Course Representative, Department of Economics (elected, two consecutive years).
Experience
- Contributed to a cost-take-out review for a mid-cap UK retail bank, quantifying £42m of in-year savings.
- Built the client’s first branch-level contribution-margin model; adopted by the COO as the standing performance tool.
- Received a return offer (the only one made to a non-MBA summer in the London office).
- Produced a working paper on SME credit transmission that was cited in the November 2023 Financial Stability Report.
- Delivered a 40-page literature review on heterogeneous agent models to the senior economist group.
- Cleaned and merged six datasets (ONS, FCA, Companies House) for a study on post-2010 SME financing; acknowledged in publication.
- Presented preliminary findings at the 2023 LSE Undergraduate Research Forum.
Leadership & Activities
- Cambridge Finance & Investment Society · Events Director. Ran 14 speaker events in 2024–25 (attendance up 60% year on year).
- LSESU Debating Society · Quarterfinalist, European University Debating Championship 2023.
- FT Schools· Volunteer tutor (economics), 2021–23.
Skills, Languages & Interests
- Technical: Stata, R, Python (pandas, statsmodels), advanced Excel.
- Languages: English (native), Mandarin (fluent), French (working).
- Interests: distance running (sub-3:30 marathon), twentieth-century British economic history, choral singing.
The Anatomy
What makes this format distinctive, and what the hiring reader expects to see.
- Name and contact at the top, centred
- Full legal name set large, followed by a single compact line of contact details. No photo, no headline, no summary. The format assumes the reader does not need convincing to keep reading.
- Education leads
- At Harvard, education comes first and carries more weight than the experience section. Full degree title, institution, dates, thesis or dissertation title, honours, relevant coursework. This is the format's signature choice.
- Experience in reverse chronological order
- Institution bold, role italic, dates right-aligned. Each role has 3 to 5 bullets. Bullets begin with an action verb and end with a concrete outcome where possible. No responsibilities, only evidence.
- Sections are explicit and ordered
- Education, Experience, Leadership and Activities, Skills and Interests, and (if relevant) Publications or Languages. Each section header is restrained, usually small caps or bold serif.
- No colour, no columns, no design
- A single column of serif type on white paper. The authority of the format comes from its restraint. Anything decorative signals the candidate does not trust the content to carry itself.
When it works
You are applying into a structured evaluation process where the reader expects a specific format. Graduate schemes, fellowships, academic posts, or early-career strategy consulting. The format's conservatism is a feature, not a bug.
When it does not
You are a senior operator with a career story to tell. The Harvard template treats the CV as a record, not a positioning document. It will not help you argue for a role, only list what you have done.
What a template cannot do
A template is a shape. Not a read.
Most CVs I read for real hiring mandates are not poorly formatted. They are poorly positioned. The wrong achievements lead. The sector narrative is implicit when it should be explicit. The value proposition is accurate but common. A polished template cannot fix any of these, because a template is a shape, not a read.
A template tells you how to lay out a CV. Knowing what belongs on it, in what order, framed which way, for whom, is the work of the CV Intelligence Report.
The other templates in the pack
See all three CV templates