As if you didn’t have enough to do during the college application process, from spending hours tediously filling out the Common App to writing your hundredth essay, your interviewer for the University of X is requesting you send her your resume before you meet. Resume?! You’ve never made one of those and don’t even know where to begin. Don’t panic—we’ve got your back.
While resumes are not always a required part of the college application process, some colleges allow you to attach an extra resume to your application, which is an opportunity you should absolutely seize so you can tell them even more about how awesome you are. And even if your interviewers don’t ask you for one, it’s always a good idea to send them your resume beforehand and bring a copy to the interview for them to refer to. Laura Marks, professional college essay editor and resume consultant based in Newton, MA, explains that bringing a resume to the interview “shows you are prepared but it also gives the interviewer a place to start asking you questions.”
So, read on to find out how to craft the perfect resume to ensure that you stand out in just one single page.
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Structure: Set It Up Right
Whoever is reading your resume will likely only be looking at it for no more than a few minutes, so it’s extremely important that it has a clear, logical structure so it’s easy to read and follow. Your resume should be kept to just one page because this is easiest for the person reviewing it and will help you stay concise.
“A well-organized resume that’s clear and consistent and chronologically ordered from most recent to earliest is best,” Marks said. She advises the following structure:
Top of the page: Your full name and contact information—definitely include your cell phone number and email address. Any additional contact info, such as your mailing address, is optional but probably not necessary. And as for your email address, if you haven’t gotten a new one since third grade, it may be time to make a new account—FlowerPower92@aol.com does not look good on a resume. Make a Gmail account that only includes your name and either an underscore, a period, or simple number sequence.
Middle of the page: The bulk of your page will be taken up by the following sections, which are the meat of your resume: Education, Extracurricular Activities, and Work and/or Leadership Experiences. We’ll go over what you should actually put in these sections when we go over content.
Bottom of the page: Here you can put any additional sections you choose to add—again, see our section on content to get some ideas of what these sections might be.
You should list each experience with the year(s) it occurred and then follow it with several bullet points (one sentence each) explaining relevant information about what you did and why it’s valuable. And remember, as Marks suggested, list your activities in chronological order.
Check out this example of something that would fit under “Extracurricular Activities”:
Editor of the Student Newspaper 2010 – 2012
- Winner of the 2011 NY Press Association Award for General Excellence
- Responsible for managing the work of over 50 staff members and overseeing content distributed monthly to over 5,000 readers
- Strengthened my ability to lead, multitask, and organize effectively
- Won personal award for generating greatest number of advertisements
Notice how the bullet points do not simply list the tasks this pre-collegiette did, but also include qualifying numbers and stats and describe how she grew from her duties in order to give more insight into her character.
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Format: Looks Do Matter
Sorry, Comic Sans MS, there’s no place for you on a college resume. Marks suggests a font style that is “12 point and easy to read,” so stick to something like Times New Roman or Cambria. She also points out that it’s important to leave enough white space (i.e., make spaces between sections, have adequately sized margins, don’t make it too text-y) and bold important titles and dates.
There are countless different ways to format your resume. You might want to list all your dates on the left-hand side and divide each section with a line, or you might decide to list your dates in parentheses after each activity and make each section heading a bigger sized font or bold. Regardless, your formatting should be uniform throughout the entire page.
Since it’s hard to visualize all the formatting possibilities and a picture is always worth a thousand words, your best bet for properly setting up your resume is to use an online resume builder to find styles you like and make the process even easier. Microsoft Word also offers resume templates for you to use. You could also ask to see your older sibling’s or friend’s resume who has already gone through the college or job application process to get more ideas.
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Content: What to Put In It To Win It (And What to Leave Out)
Summing up yourself and your life in one page can be really challenging—maybe you’ve been a part of so many clubs that you can’t fit ‘em all in and don’t know which to choose, or maybe you can’t think of enough relevant experiences to include and are struggling to fill space (which is totally normal for a pre-collegiette!). Here are three essential categories you should include and ideas for what information to touch on within them.
Education
What to include:
- The name, city, and state of your high school
- Your GPA (weighted and unweighted, if applicable)
- Your class rank (if applicable)
- SAT/ACT scores (your best score from each section)
- Any academic awards or honors (unless you make a separate section for this elsewhere)
Extracurriculars, Leadership Experience, & Work Experience
It’s a little trickier to figure out what to include or leave out in these sections. The bottom line is that you want to choose activities and experiences that are meaningful to you, speak to who you are as a person, and prove to the admissions board that you are a worthy candidate. That doesn’t mean that all your extracurriculars have to be on the level of you finding a cure for cancer, though. Marks confirms, “a part-time job that you may consider menial should be included because it shows your work ethic. Young adults are expected to have food service and landscaping jobs.” That being said, if you’ve held a more professional job or an internship, definitely include those work experiences and the specific responsibilities you had too.
So even if you’re worried that your involvement in the Knitting Club may not be impressive enough, if you frame it in a way that demonstrates your admirable qualities and accomplishments, you’ll be golden. Remember to include numbers, stats, and strong action words. Strong verbs, such as “established” or “delegated” or “managed,” can make your accomplishments sound more impressive. Additionally, for activities that were large commitments, you may want to include the hours per week you spent participating or working in order to demonstrate the extent of your involvement.
Here’s another powerfully-worded, well-structured example to use as a model:
Varsity Soccer Team (20 hours/week) Fall 2009 – 2012
- Elected captain (2012) by coach and 22 other team members
- Organized weekend scrimmages and group outings to promote teamwork and foster a positive group ethos
- Developed and implemented a “spirit buddy” system to boost morale before games
- Improved ability to lead by example and encourage others to reach their full potential
Okay, but what if you weren’t elected captain and you were just a regular old member of the soccer team? Could you still make that extracurricular activity resume-worthy? Yes! Here’s one way to do it:
Varsity Soccer Team (15 hours/week) Fall 2009 – 2012
- Dedicated hours of commitment to team while balancing academic and work obligations
- Motivated teammates on and off the field by offering positive feedback and advice
- Reinforced my ability to be a cooperative team player and work effectively with a group
If you can’t find a way to make the activity or experience sound meaningful, valuable, or insightful and it just sounds like a space-filler or item on a laundry list, then leave it off. On that same note, if you only were a part of a club or activity for a short period of time and nothing really came of your experience with it, there is no sense in putting it on your resume. As a general rule of thumb, only include things that you’d actually want to talk about (and feel comfortable and confident doing so) in an interview.
Whether you have different sections for your extracurricular activities, leadership experiences, and work experiences or combine them into just one or two sections depends on what you’ve personally done and what will best fit onto the page, so experiment with various options.
Additional Info
Again, deciding what additional sections to make depends on what you’ve done. Here are just a few ideas of things you could put in a distinct section.
- Awards and honors
- Community service and/or volunteer work
- Significant travel experience and/or summer programs
- Interests (as long as it’s something specific and isn’t reflected anywhere else)
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Final Touches: Proofread, Proofread, and Proofread Again
Now that you have your resume structured, formatted, and full of valuable content, it’s time to edit that baby until you can read it in your sleep. Careless mistakes like typos are big red flags and show a lack of attention to detail, so it’s really important that you make sure your spelling and grammar are flawless. This means that you should not be the sole editor of your resume; you should have others look at it too to ensure it’s in tip-top shape. Marks suggests having at least two other people—trusted, knowledgeable sources who can give you legitimate feedback like a college coach, teacher, parent, or college grad—to help you edit your resume.
Remember, there are always ways to improve your resume and you’ll undoubtedly rework yours time and time again over the next few years so make sure to check out HC’s 10 easy ways to improve your resume!
Now you only have one final task (unless you still have a hundred application essays on your to-do list): “make sure you are extremely comfortable discussing everything on your resume,” Marks advises. “And don’t simply repeat what the interviewer can read on the resume. Elaborate on the topic.” So practice discussing all the key points on your resume, not just by reciting the bullet points but by giving more in-depth information that paints an even more vivid picture of yourself, and you’ll nail all those interviews. Good luck!