Today, we’ll be going over high school resumes. What are they, why are they useful, and how do you craft one?
What is a high school resume and why is it useful?
High school resumes are a powerful tool that give universities a snapshot of your awards, volunteering, and extracurricular activities. Here, you can write in detail about any of these things and present it to admissions counselors in an organized manner. In addition to presenting a holistic picture of you to universities, creating your resume can be beneficial for the rest of your college admissions process, as it forces you to put down all of your activities and accomplishments in one place. This becomes particularly helpful when you are preparing for an interview, brainstorming essay topics, or asking a teacher for a letter of recommendation.
How do you craft a resume?
First, start with a heading that includes your name, address, email, and phone number. Then, your high school, graduation year, unweighted GPA, and weighted GPA.
Afterwards, you can begin to list your honors & awards. Be sure to list them in order of importance. For each item, list the name of the award followed by the grade level(s) you received it in.
Lastly, list your extracurricular activities, volunteering, work experience, and coursework (like online classes or classes taken at a local college/university). Again, be sure to list things in order of importance. First, list the title of your position and then the name of the organization/club/place. After that write which grade levels you participated in, the hours spent per week, and the weeks spent per year on this activity. Then, write a concise description of the activity – be sure to use active verbs (created, assisted, led, organized, etc).
Anything else to keep in mind?
Keep it simple! Admissions counselors don’t need to know every nitty-gritty detail (nor will they have the patience to read them). Learn how to write a concise and effective sentence that gets to the heart of your involvement.
Be sure to focus on your most important commitments. That is, the ones that you did for the longest and got most involved in. These are the ones that colleges really want to hear about. Less so about the 15 clubs you’re a member of but don’t really do anything for.
This is a good place to showcase anything that you weren’t able to fit on your main application. Something important about you that for whatever reason couldn’t fit into your essays or anywhere else. Use the opportunity!
Be very on top of your formatting. This is meant to look clean and professional. If you start making formatting or (even worse) spelling/grammar errors, admissions counselors will start to think that you did a quick and sloppy job without paying much attention to detail. Think of your resume as a reflection of the kind of student you will be at their college – make sure to take care of the small details!
At American College Counselors, we help all of our students craft powerful resumes that stand out and showcase their merits. If you are looking for help crafting a resume or with any other part of the application process, contact us at [email protected].We are happy to set up a free introductory call to discuss your student and how we can help.
