MIT Resume Template

The MIT Career Advising & Professional Development (CAPD) resume is a STEM-first take on the one-page US format. The section order is rearranged to put what recruiters at engineering and research employers actually scan for: Education → Skills → Experience → Projects → Awards. The layout itself stays conservative — single column, no graphics, plain bullets — so it survives every ATS unchanged.

This template gives you that exact ordering, with a Skills block immediately under Education so your stack is visible in the first quarter of the page.

CAPD's guidance is built around an engineering hiring funnel: clear specs first, evidence underneath.

• Length: one page until you have substantial industry experience.
• Font: Calibri, Arial, Times New Roman or Garamond, 10–12 pt body, 14–18 pt name.
• Margins: 0.5"–1".
• Bullets: standard round bullets only — no checkmarks, arrows, or emoji. CAPD highlights this for ATS safety.
• Section order: Education, then a prominent Skills block, then Experience, Projects, and Awards.
• Photo: never on a US resume.

MIT's published samples do not use a summary section. If you are pivoting fields (e.g. mech-E to software, lab science to industry), a single tagline directly under your contact info is acceptable. Otherwise, your education and skills do this job already.

STEM bullets are evidence: a clear technical action and a measurable outcome.

• Open with a verb that reflects the technical work (Designed, Implemented, Benchmarked, Characterized).
• Name the language, tool, instrument, or method — recruiters scan for keywords.
• Quantify performance: latency, accuracy, throughput, sample size, cost.
• Connect the work to a downstream result (shipped to production, accepted to NeurIPS, reduced fab cycle time by 18%).
• For research, include the PI or lab name on the institution line.

Education is the top section and stays there until you have a few years of full-time experience.

• MIT, then degree (e.g. S.B. in Course 6-3), then graduation date.
• Include GPA only if it is competitive — and always include the scale (MIT uses a 5.0 scale, which most recruiters won't recognize without the denominator).
• List relevant coursework in a single comma-separated line; pick the courses that match the role.
• UROP, thesis, or capstone work belongs under the degree line with the advising professor noted.

The Skills block sits high on an MIT resume — directly after Education. Group entries by stack: Programming Languages, Frameworks / Libraries, Tools, Hardware / Instrumentation, Languages. Rank within each group by current proficiency, strongest first. Avoid fluff terms ("problem-solving", "team player") — CAPD's samples never use them.

• Listing your 5.0 GPA without the scale. Recruiters outside MIT will read it as suspicious — always write 4.7/5.0.
• Decorative bullets (✓, →, ★). CAPD flags these as ATS hazards.
• Burying skills below Experience. For STEM roles, Skills belongs near the top.
• Mixing personal projects into Experience. Keep a separate Projects section.
• Skipping the Course number. Listing "6-3" or "18" is expected and saves a line.