How to Write A College Resume
The concept of a resume is simple: it’s just a concise and informative summary of all your best attributes, including education, extracurricular or volunteer experience, and skills. While a good resume alone won’t get you into your dream college or university, it can be instrumental in helping to differentiate you among similarly qualified applicants by highlighting the character traits and abilities your target school’s admissions officers are seeking.
It goes without saying that as a high school student, your most valuable asset is your academic success and extracurricular involvement. This shows top schools both your commitment to your educational goals and how you could enrich the social culture on a college campus. So, be detailed when writing about your academic experience, including any specific honors, awards, or leadership positions in school clubs and organizations. Be sure to include any innovative contributions you made to your school, team, or larger community, particularly those that reveal your unique culture, heritage, personality, or passion.
Aside from those classic tips, here are a handful of essential, yet often overlooked, dos and don’ts to keep in mind when crafting your college resume.
Highlight the Length and Depth of Your Extracurricular Activities
It is not necessary to include every extracurricular activity you’ve ever participated in on your resume. It can come across as “resume fluff,” and admissions officers are trained to see right through that. Instead, pick a handful of meaningful activities you were fully engaged in that demonstrate the responsibilities of your role and the skills you developed.
Try to ensure these extracurriculars align with the major you intend to pursue in college, and highlight the depth and length of your commitments. Colleges and universities are seeking focused and reliable applicants who care enough to have dedicated meaningful time and attention to their activities outside the classroom.
Use Actionable and Concise Language
When writing any resume, remember to be as specific as you can with the language you use and remain fact-based; you should be able to quantify and qualify every claim you make. Use active voice and write to express impact, not to impress employers. You don’t need to use the same flowery language you might employ in your AP literature class. Just watch out for spelling and grammar errors and write concisely, so that people or AI systems can understand the general quality of your experience without having to dig too deeply.
Also, rather than just listing the duties and responsibilities of past experiences, use actionable verbs that emphasize your leadership and impact. For example, instead of writing “I was responsible for selling homecoming tickets,” you could say “I played an instrumental role in increasing homecoming ticket sales by 54% year-over-year by assisting with the creation and production of numerous marketing materials, like posters, flyers, t-shirts, and social media posts.”
Be Deliberate With Formatting
Top schools get hundreds, if not thousands, of applications a year. You can improve your chances of admission by making your resume as easy to read as possible, and smart formatting can do a lot of the heavy lifting. Place your most up-to-date contact information at the very top of your resume, so no one has to dig too far to learn how to reach you. List the sections of the document (i.e., Work Experience, Education, Skills and Abilities, etc.) in order of importance. If your grades, test scores, and honors are more impressive than your extracurricular experience, lead with your academic achievements. Break up large walls of text with appropriate amounts of white space. It’s good practice always to add a space after each paragraph throughout the document, and use a straightforward, easy-to-read font for scannability. Typically, serif fonts like Times New Roman or EB Garamond work best for headers, while sans-serif fonts like Arial or Roboto are best optimized for body copy.
Don’t include a photograph, use wacky colors, or use abbreviations or slang. Lastly, remember to list your experience in reverse chronological order, leading with the most recent honor award or volunteer opportunity and working backward from there.
Keeping these tips in mind as you optimize your resume will help you enhance your odds when applying to college. However, if you list out all of your accomplishments and realize you could benefit from one or two more extracurricular activities, contact us to learn more about how our advanced research programs could be the boost you need to get into the school of your dreams.