Yale Resume Template

The Yale Office of Career Strategy publishes one of the most prescriptive resume guides of any US university — it pins down font size, margin width, date alignment, and even bullet rhythm. Yale also distributes seven approved templates for different stages (undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, public health, divinity, etc.), all sharing the same one-page, single-column, dateright-aligned skeleton.

This template captures that skeleton and lets you swap your content into a layout an OCS adviser would recognize immediately.

Yale's formatting guide leaves almost no room for interpretation.

• Length: one page; two pages only for graduate students with significant research or clinical experience.
• Font: 10–12 pt body, 12–14 pt for your name. Times New Roman, Garamond, Calibri, or Arial.
• Margins: at least 0.5" on every side. OCS warns against shrinking margins to cram more in — cut content instead.
• Dates: right-aligned. Month/Year format (e.g. September 2024 – Present).
• Color: black, with at most one accent color for section headings.
• No photo, no graphics, no columns.

Yale's seven templates do not include a summary or objective section. If you are switching careers and feel a tagline helps frame the rest of the page, keep it under two lines and place it directly under your contact block — never as its own labeled section.

OCS uses a STAR-aligned bullet structure: each line should make the situation/task, the action you took, and the result visible in one sentence.

• Lead with a strong action verb in the correct tense (past for finished roles, present for current).
• Quantify outcomes with concrete numbers — Yale's samples are unusually metric-dense.
• Order bullets within a role by impact, not chronology.
• Aim for 2–4 bullets per role; cap at 2 lines each.
• Drop first-person pronouns and articles.

Education comes first while you are at Yale and for two to three years after graduation.

• Yale University, then degree, then graduation date (right-aligned).
• Include GPA if it is 3.5 or above; cumulative or major GPA is fine, but label which.
• Senior essay or thesis title sits underneath the degree line.
• Study abroad and short summer programs can appear as sub-entries.

Yale's Skills section sits at the bottom of the page, after Experience and Activities. Group entries clearly: Languages with proficiency level, Technical with specific tools, Laboratory / Research for STEM and life-science applicants. Avoid generic descriptors ("team player", "detail-oriented") — the OCS guide treats those as filler.

• Shrinking margins below 0.5". OCS calls this out specifically.
• Left-aligning dates. Yale's seven templates all right-align them.
• Adding a photo. US application norms — and Yale's samples — leave them out.
• Inflating proficiency labels. Don't claim "fluent" Spanish if you wouldn't conduct a meeting in it.
• Listing high-school achievements after sophomore year.