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CreateCVOnline

ATS-friendly · Single column · ATS 5/5

Student CV template

Education sits on a soft tinted panel in larger type, wherever you place it.

Nothing here is drawn for effect. Each choice — plain headings, a single flow, text-only contact details — exists because it is what a parser reads back correctly. It runs as one column with no photo, which is the combination most application portals and most UK, US and Irish employers prefer.

Live preview of the Student CV template, rendered at full page size with an example CV. The preview is the same code that generates your PDF.

The design

About the Student CV layout

Student CV is built for a first application, where a degree and a couple of modules carry more weight than two summer jobs. The education section is set on a very light tinted panel in slightly larger type so it anchors the page, and the summary is italicised to read as a short objective statement — the section order itself stays entirely under your control. Spacing is generous, which stops a genuinely short CV from looking like an unfinished one.

Who it’s for

The readers and situations this layout was drawn for.

  • University students and recent graduates
  • Internship and placement applications
  • First jobs with little paid experience

Key features

What is actually different about this template on the page.

  • Tinted emphasis panel behind the education section
  • Italic objective-style summary
  • Generous spacing tuned for a one-page student CV
  • Single column, no icons, photo or graphics

ATS score 5/5 · Excellent

How this layout behaves in an applicant tracking system

It holds the full 5 out of 5 for a simple reason — no sidebar, no table, no text baked into an image. What you upload is very close to what the system reads back.

Because there is only one text column, an extractor never has to decide which block to read first — the page has exactly one reading order and it is the one you can see.

There is little left to fix here. If you want to see how the rest of the parser-safe range compares — and what a 5 out of 5 is actually measuring — the ATS CV templates page scores every layout on the same criteria.

Parsing checklistATS score 5 out of 5
Reading order
Single flow
Headings
Real text
Tables
None
Images
None
Selectable text
Yes

Scores are our own assessment of how a parser handles the layout — never a guarantee about one specific employer’s system.

In practice

Three situations Student CV is the right answer to

Templates are chosen badly when they are chosen in the abstract. Here is what sending this one actually looks like.
Case 1

A large-employer application portal

You are uploading a PDF into a careers site that will index it before a recruiter opens anything. This layout is designed for precisely that first reader, so nothing is lost between the upload button and the recruiter’s screen. A typical example: University students and recent graduates.

Case 2

Uploaded, not emailed

Plain headings, plain lists and one text flow mean the file you upload is the file the system reads back: no reordered sections, no dropped job titles, no dates attached to the wrong employer.

Case 3

A UK, US, Canadian or Irish application

Employers in these markets discourage photographs outright — some screening teams remove them before a hiring manager sees the file, to keep the process defensible. Starting without one means nothing has to be removed. Student CV has no photo slot to remove, so the same file works in every market you send it to.

Make it yours

Customising Student CV

The template sets the structure; everything inside it is yours. Colours, fonts, spacing, section order and paper size are all controls in the CV builder, and the preview updates as you change them — nothing is applied blind.

Accent colour

Student CV ships with #1d4ed8 as its accent. Colour is deliberately minimal. A dark accent on the headings is safe and makes the printed page easier for a human to scan; nothing about the accent affects parsing, because a parser reads text and ignores hue entirely.

Fonts and heading style

Stay with a common sans or serif. Unusual faces can export with non-standard character mappings, which produces a PDF that looks correct and extracts as gibberish — precisely the failure this family exists to prevent. Heading case — uppercase, capitalised or as typed — is a separate switch, and it changes the character of the page more than most people expect.

Spacing and density

Font size, line height, section spacing and page margins are all sliders. On a single column they behave predictably: reduce section spacing first, margins second, and only then the type size — a CV set below 9.5pt starts to look like an attempt to hide its length.

Sections and order

Use the conventional section names. A screening system matches on headings it recognises, so “Experience” earns matches that “Where I’ve worked” does not, however much better the second one reads. Every section can be renamed, reordered or hidden, and Pro adds custom sections for anything the standard set does not cover.

Paper size and export

A4 or US Letter, switched in one control, with the layout re-flowing to the new page rather than being scaled to fit. The PDF is generated from the same code you see in the preview, so what you approve on screen is what downloads.

Student CV: common questions

Yes — this is one of the safest layouts we publish. The page is a single sequence of headed text blocks, which is exactly the structure parsers were written to handle.

Alternatives

Related templates

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Start your CV with Student CV

Open it with the example content already in place, replace it with your own, and download a PDF when it reads the way you want. Switching to another template later keeps every word you have written.

Free plan, free download, no credit card.