Crafting a Winning College Resume

Webinar Transcription

2024-01-04 – Crafting a Winning College Resume

Hi, everyone. My name is Stacey Tuttle, and I am your moderator today. Welcome to craft, Crafting, excuse me, a Winning College Resume. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’ll start off with a presentation and then answer your questions in a live Q&A. On the sidebar, you can download our slides and you can start submitting questions in the Q&A tab.

Now, let’s go ahead and meet our panelists. I keep mispronouncing things today. It must be a new year thing for me. Maria, over to you for a brief introduction. No worries. Thank you. Um, hi everyone. My name is Maria Acosta Robayo, and I graduated from Harvard class of 2020, where I studied sociology and global health policy, and where I was also a pre-med student.

Um, I’m currently living in D.C. and doing government consulting. So, a bit different than the pre-med, uh, path. But, if you’re ever interested in some of, um, that content around pre med and what that path is like, I know there’s a lot of webinars that CollegeAdvisor does on that. And so, um, I encourage you to look out for those.

Amazing. I know we both have very similar public health backgrounds too, so we can definitely answer a lot of questions if anybody in the room is interested in that side of healthcare and the health field. On that note, we do wanna get to know a little bit more about you all. So you’re gonna go ahead and see a poll appear to you now, uh, give a sense of what grade you are you in.

Are you in, um, freshman, sophomore, junior, senior year? Are you. In middle school, are you in eighth grade? Um, or maybe you fall in another category, maybe you’re a parent or postgraduate who is interested in applying to college now, um, go ahead and let us know who you are. And I don’t know about you, Maria, but when I was in high school, I did not have a resume.

I remember distinctly getting to freshman year at Yale. I’m feeling so behind because I didn’t have a resume. So they have these like resume workshops at college. Um, but now, you know, especially now, going into the college application process. You often do need a resume as part of the application for a lot of these schools.

Um, do you recall having a resume when you applied? I know you went through QuestBridge and I might be jumping ahead of the game, but what did that look like for you? Yeah. So I created a resume, but it was more for one of my extracurricular activities. So it was part of like this business club at my school.

Um, and part of it was like making your resume, but it is completely different than the resume that I made when I was actually in college with professional help from like the school career services. Um, that is totally different. And my, the one that I made in high school was like five pages long with like everything I had ever done.

And that is not at all the resume that we are looking to make for college or for jobs. And so, um, I definitely revised that a lot with the office of career services at my school. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There’s also, I think, you know, resume is a living document, and we can talk a little bit about that more as we go along in the presentation in the Q and A, but it does evolve over time.

Right? So let’s see who’s in the room with us today. We actually have a lot of juniors. So I’m imagining college is very much on the mind for for all of you. We do have a sophomore and a freshman. Um, and then somebody in the other category. So welcome, whatever relationship you have to the college application process.

We do hope we can help you answer some of your questions tonight. With that, Maria, I’m going to turn it over to you for the main part of the presentation before we move to Q and A. So over to you now. Good thing. Thanks, Stacy. So, what is a resume? We’ve kind of already alluded to it, um, throughout like beginning questions that we had here, but it’s important to recognize the difference between a resume and what could be a CV.

Um, you might hear that term later on. Usually a CV can be longer. It includes a lot of like, Potentially like publications or extra activities or job offerings or job experiences. Sorry, and those can be a little bit longer. But when we’re talking about a resume, especially in the context of applying to college and applying to jobs, usually we’re talking about a one page snapshot of.

And again, in the context of applying to college, it’s a one page snapshot of your high school experience. Um, usually unless you’ve started something in middle school and continue throughout high school, you don’t want to list everything you did in elementary school or middle school. You really want to keep it to your high school years.

Um, and there’s different sections that make up a resume. And so how do you build those sections out? Um, so I’ll talk a little bit about some of those sections. Um, usually the top will have like Your name some contact info like your email potentially like your address if you have like a mailing address, um, Uh your like phone number things like that um but then immediately after usually you have like a section of achievements and that’s usually where you would put like Your high school, what your GPA is, potentially some test scores.

Again, as this evolves in college, you would probably, like, take away your test scores, because at that point when you’re applying to, um, to jobs, they’re mostly looking at, like, your GPA, if you’ve gotten any awards, um, and so those are some of the things that go in, like, that initial section. There’s also other sections where you have the opportunity to write extracurriculars that you’ve had and so like what sports you might have been involved in certain performances that you might have been in clubs that you were a part of um, you could also specifically in those, uh places like mention your positions of leadership and I think an important part of this and I’ll have some screenshots of examples and in upcoming slides is making sure you clarify like what your position is What type of club like the name of the club?

And a description with a couple bullet points. Again, very succinctly saying what you did in those activities. Um, you probably will also have a section for awards where you’re able to write like school awards such as ones that you might have gotten at class or school wide or maybe even if you got any recognitions in your county or in your district, in your state, in the nation.

These are opportunities for you to highlight those things. And again, I just want to re emphasize that this is what we’re talking about when we’re, um, referring to the resume for colleges. Again, this will look different, um, from the one that you might submit to a college. Like a job or an internship once you’re already in college, and usually the career, um, the Office of Career Services will help you craft that.

Usually follow similar guidelines, but what you would include might be a little bit different. Um, so coming back to like that high school one, uh, you could also include some work experience. So, um, If you’ve been working, you could add some of like your paid job opportunities. And with that entailed, you can write some internships there.

And so those are all opportunities to list real life experiences that you’ve had handling responsibility or potentially doing something that maybe you’re looking forward to continue in college. Another area here that’s really important is community service. So this can include your participation in like drives, in volunteering, maybe, uh, information from like a passion project that you started or you’re engaged in.

Um, then another section is skills. Um, and there’s different types of skills that you can talk about. There’s technical skills, such as like programs or platforms in which you’re proficient. So these could include things like InDesign or Excel or Adobe Illustrator. These can be languages, um, both human and computer.

So this can be like Spanish, ASL or Java, C And then some non technical skills, such as if you have like a certificate for a skill, like, you know, if you did like speech and debate, or like if you have a black belt in taekwondo, things like that that just highlight skills or things that you’ve accomplished, um, and you’ve like, you’re certified in, and you have like proof of that.

Um, and then usually at the bottom, and this is also true of like resumes that end up going to your job, is usually a very small section where you can list some interests. So this is an opportunity to add things that might not be seen in other parts of your application but might just catch the eye. So like some of mine when I was applying is like surfing, medical ethics, French literature.

Those are things that were a little bit like, you know, different from other things that I might’ve listed in my application. Um, I know once I went to college, like I did some ice climbing. And so I put that on my resume so that when interviews came up, like there’s something interesting and different that like an interviewer could ask me about.

I could tell them about my experience, ice climbing and things that I learned and things like that. And so. If you have like a skill or an experience that you’ve had that you’re going to put down on your interest. That’s again, something that you want like, uh, someone that’s reviewing your application to like just catch their eye.

Um, and then just something to keep in mind, regardless of what section you are writing. Um, and this is, um, Again, whether it’s like skills, extracurriculars, interests, awards, you want to make sure that you remember a couple things. The first is making clear and distinct sections in your resume. Like, you want to make sure they have a label, they have, like, different sub bullets of what you did, and it’s not, like, all over the place.

And you want to make sure that if you’re talking about awards, you keep the awards in that section. If you’re talking about interests, you keep it in that section, and you’re not putting, like, an interest in an award or vice versa. Like, you want to keep those distinct, just to make sure that whoever’s reading your resume has a clear flow of, like, seeing what you’ve done, and getting feedback.

just compartmentalize that. Um, the other is to make sure that under each experience to add descriptions of what you did, that start with verbs, something like I like developed a blah, blah, blah, led a group of blah, blah, blah, initiated, blah, blah, blah. Just verbs that really allow you to talk about your experience.

And if you go on Google or your preferred search engine, you can definitely find a list of verbs that when you look up, like, Verbs to use for resume descriptions. There’s gonna be tons of links on that and then something else that I learned Just I kind of knew when I started my freshman year In college, but I just continually got reminded of it throughout My college experience is to make sure to include numbers and statistics about what you accomplished So if you’re talking about like leading a group or starting something like right how many people did you lead?

If you were doing a collection drive or doing something where there is items that were donated or collected like make sure you’re listing how many items were collected or donated. Um, if you were serving like a specific, a specific group, don’t just say, you know, I was serving a community. Um, you know, in this specific region, say like, I serve this number of people in this specific community.

Um, if you were raising money again, like how much money did you raise and all of these are opportunities to give like bigger snapshots of what you’ve done. And one way that this can be a little relatable is again, if someone was giving you their resume, you would probably want something a little bit more specific.

You would want to see in numbers and in a more detailed way what they did than just something generic. And so just try to step in the shoes of admissions officers as you’re thinking about what would be good and what you would want to read as well. Um, so I gave here an example, again this is from my time in college where I was part of, uh, the yearbook at Harvard and where I was also part of the tutoring center.

And so if you look at the format, It is also like very squished together because remember this is one page in which you’re supposed to fit a lot of things And so you really have to play sometimes with like the fonts and the indents, but here you have two categories This is both under experiences because these weren’t like jobs that I had or sorry Um, yeah, these were experiences that I had and so I have on the first section there The title of where I was working, like of what club I was a part of, which is Harvard yearbook publications.

On the other side of the margin, I have the location of where that was. Then there’s the line under Harvard yearbook publications has my title. Like what did I do there? For example, my roommate was the president. Like she got to write president there and had so many other things to describe in her section.

I was just a business associate and so I wrote that title and then on the other side there you can see the time frame and that’s really important because you definitely want to signal how long you were, you were doing these responsibilities. It’s very different if, for example, if you’re the president or leading something, it’s very different if you lead it for like two weeks versus if you lead it for three years.

Um, right? And so you want to make sure that your time and experiences is, um, registered there. And then underneath, you could see two descriptions of what I did. And if you notice, I followed kind of the advice that I gave here, which is started with action verbs, and then gave, tried to be as descriptive and as, like, numbers focused as possible.

And so I wrote, like, You know, I directed the marketing and sales of a thousand year books for parents and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And talked about like how much revenue that gave us, that gave us 150,000. Plus of revenue the next line. Like I didn’t just say I planned an organized events. I said what event specifically?

So I organized for the annual club alumni reunion and I didn’t just say like I didn’t just up there I said like it included 60 plus alumni and 15 plus staff members and so that gives whoever’s reading this a bigger picture of like This wasn’t just like a reunion of like three or four people who got together.

This was like Something that needed the logistical span of knowing that we had to get caterers, we had to get, like, a venue that fits 60 people. And so, those are all things that, unless you mention and you specify in the descriptions, Your, whoever’s reading your resume won’t see that, um, and same with the, with the example underneath.

I won’t go through that, but, um, through that again, but like it just, I just want you to see that it follows a similar, a similar format where I specifically wrote how many students I worked with per week and the subjects, not just in like various subjects I listed out, like I tutored in biology, chemistry, anatomy and physiology, genetics, Spanish and French.

Those were, how many there, like, six different topics. And so, why is that important? Because it doesn’t show that I just tutored. I tutored in six different topics in one semester. And so, that again shows a different level of, like, commitment to the role. It shows more about, like, my abilities to be able to teach in several of these.

And so, again, those are opportunities for you to highlight your experiences and to, you know, Just gain recognition of, of the things that you have done a little bit more clearly. Um, so kind of taking just a step back. I, we were just in the weeds of what the resume might look like, what it includes. Um, but taking a step back of the, like why this matters.

There’s this question of like, how big of a part does a resume play in a college admissions? And I would say similar to the answer for most of these, except for essays, which is a very, very, very big component. That’s hard to find in other places. This resume is just one of many data points. And so it helps to consolidate everything in one place, and it helps to have one document.

Um, it helps you to have maybe a little bit more descriptions and, and, uh, numbers in there. But to be honest, like, it’s not necessarily too different from what you already include in your Common App, right? If you haven’t seen a Common App before, There is a section where you have an opportunity to list 10 different activities, and they have sections for like how, how many hours, uh, how many hours a day, how many days a week, how many weeks of the month.

Did you do it during summer break, winter break? If anything, it asks you for more data. Um, and then it also, you’re able to write like how long you did it for. They give you space and character count to describe what you did. I would say the resume probably gives you a better opportunity to highlight maybe some experiences more than others just because of like how you decide to use the word count on the common app.

Each activity has the same word count or the same character count, whereas on the resume, you could decide like, hey, I want to add an extra bullet and more words to this experience than another. So I would say that is one of the differences, um, but again, this is one of several different data points, and if you wanted to maybe do the common app sections on activities, awards, and community service, which again are three different sections in the common app that are very analogous, or actually like Parallel to um, what you’re gonna write in your resume.

That’s something that you can do side by side and so you could save time on that help yourself out by Thinking about these categories and making sure that like you’re using your time to make sure you fill out the common app Which is necessary and then also using that same data that you’re putting there to make your resume And so that’s just a tip on like how to kill um, uh one bird with two two birds with one stone um So, why is summer break such an important time to build your resume?

So, you could build your resume at any point before your application, right? But, summer, like, summer break is an opportunity for you to take a step back and have time to reflect, and to research, and to write. Um, this is a good time for you to be writing your essays. It’s also a good time to just study.

Look in hindsight of the things you’ve accomplished without the pressure of like imminent deadlines on your classes, on your tasks, on extracurriculars that you might have during the year. And so having this time of reflection allows you to get a perspective on what you might need to develop or do the next school year to continue developing your resume.

So if you’re building that resume, you might notice, okay, maybe I don’t have a lot of experiences. In like the academic realm like maybe i’ve done like a lot of sports or a lot of like extracurriculars But maybe like now that I take count like take account of everything that i’ve done in my high school time Maybe I really want to focus on being more Being part of a more academic club or being part of a more academic experience to show my rigor there as well and so that’s something that is hard to Kind of recognize in your day to day while you’re in school because you’re you’re just in the classes that you’re in and the clubs that you’re in You But when you take time to put it down on paper, and really take stock of what you’ve done, you get a chance to see where the gaps are.

And if you do it during the summer break, then it gives you a chance to dive deeper into that the next year. Um, and the sooner that you do it, the better, because, well, one, you get a chance to maybe see the gaps early, and be part of a club for longer. Um, And also it just helps you to have a foundation that you can continue to build on.

Um, and so for some of the students that I worked with who were sophomores, um, I recommended that they start a resume without, like, feeling like they have to cut everything that they’ve done to make space for others. Just, like, write your resume, write your resume as if you had unlimited, like, Or not unlimited, but like maybe like two or three pages.

And then for your actual resume that we would submit to college, you could then choose the most important ones, the most relevant and have those be your one pager. Um, but again, if you’re a sophomore, I know there’s also a freshman. Um, if you have time to reflect on the things that you’ve done, um, write those things there and then just keep building it out.

And then when you’re a senior, you can then decide what to cut. Same for the juniors. I would say the upcoming summer is a good opportunity for you to really take stock of this. Um, and if you have time, even before the summer, like right this semester, it will, it will give you a potential opportunity to see, like, maybe I need more leadership positions and it might make you decide.

To run for a position in your club this year that you would start next year. And so again, the earlier you do it, the better for yourself. Um, and then, uh, one extra thing here that I kind of, uh, referenced before is that you, the content in your resume is going to be very similar to some of the content that you write in your common app.

And so if you write your resume, it’s going to give you a head start on that activities, awards, and community service sections of the Common App. So the Common App doesn’t open until August, which means that you would have to wait to like actually write those down. But if you have it written down somewhere before, when it comes out, all you have to do is copy and paste and make sure that it’s correct.

that you like tweak the character count to make sure it fits, but like you’ve already done some of the work, um, which is really going to be valuable when you start realizing like, okay, this is kind of extra things to handle than the normal school year. And so any of those ways to get ahead of the game are just going to be really helpful.

Um, so I made this table here to just describe like some of the things that as a high schooler you could be doing during your summer breaks that you could add to your resume. And so none of these are extremely mutually exclusive where you can’t do other things or if like I say, you know, sometimes here and not on the other like these are just a general picture.

Um, and so on the left column you see the different types of activities, very common activities that folks add. To their common app and then on the top row you could see 9th grade 10th grade and 11th grade. So let’s go through these Um, so volunteering you could volunteer any of the three years Um, there might be some volunteer opportunities that require you to be 11 like a certain age which might limit what grade you’re in before the most for most part there’s um Opportunities for you to volunteer regardless of what grade you are once you start high school Um, there’s even opportunities to, like, volunteer potentially with your school or with other, um, things that may seem a little bit more accessible, but there’s definitely, um, yeah, this is something that spans throughout all three years.

You could shadow. So that career shadowing is something that you can do starting again. I’ll say starting in ninth grade But I know that there’s folks who have done it even in middle school. Um, and so you could shadow Uh in my head when I hear shadow, I immediately go to like shadowing a doctor Um, because that’s what I did in high school But honestly, if there’s any career choice that you were interested in pursuing in college, or a major that you were interested that you know is really closely tied to a certain profession, start thinking about what are folks in your community, people that you go to or see, or like are, you know, again, part of your community that you could go and shadow.

And that’s something that’s available ninth through 11th grade. Um, because of COVID, definitely, um, like health professionals have been a little bit more, um, It’s just been a little bit harder to be part of the shattering world there because they often, especially during COVID, like 2021, 2020, it was hard to find opportunities where you could be in a health setting without being like an extra person to like be concerned with about getting COVID or spreading COVID.

Um, I think as 2024 rolls around now, still getting used to saying that, um, It is now a little bit more open where opportunities are opening up again, um, especially for those who have been vaccinated and have their boosters and whatnot. And so again, encourage you to think about, um, shadowing somebody and getting a sense for, okay, what does this career actually look like?

Um, the third row here is take online classes or college classes. This is something that you can do starting sometimes in ninth grade. I took some online classes my ninth grade I couldn’t start taking college classes until my 10th grade or the summer before 10th grade and so Um, I would say for the most part once you hit 10th grade You usually are able to take college classes in like community your local community college Um, but this is something I would definitely look into if you want to Either bump your GPA Or just, uh, display a higher level of academic rigor.

Um, you could also attend a college high school program. Again, some of these might not be open for 9th graders, I’ve definitely seen some for 10th, there’s definitely some for 11th. Um, some of them are very grade specific, but these are opportunities that colleges offer high school students to come in for a summer, come in for Christmas break, some type of break within like the school year.

And be part of either taking classes or be part of like a really interesting, uh, program in research or in development or like all these different topics. And so I would definitely look online. I would work if you have a CollegeAdvisor. Uh, I worked on, on making a big spreadsheet, I think two years ago, full of summer, summer opportunities that included college high school programs that I know is still circulating.

And so definitely would ask your advisor about that. Um, and that’s a culmination of like. So many, uh, different programs that were available, uh, during those years, and most of them were reoccurring. Um, The next one here is creating a passion project. And so for those of you who might not have heard those words before, passion project just refers to like something that you start that is usually a community service project or something where you are serving somebody you’re doing out of a passion to help others, to serve others, to build something.

Um, and again, it’s as a project where you take the initiative to start it. And so I’ll give you an example of my passion project. I, um, started a, like a small nonprofit when I was in high school that would help connect, uh, these different like aid organizations and missionary organizations that were traveling abroad.

They would come back and say like, Hey, we did some service and these regions. And we realized folks really needed donations in like. Maybe, uh, it’s some one region like really needed school supplies for their kids. Another region needed hygiene materials, another needed clothing. And so when they would come back and they’d say like, I would, I would interview them and ask them what they needed.

And then I would connect with hospitals, high schools, universities in my region and make sure that like, I was finding folks who could supply the need. And then we would do donation drives. We would collect those clothes. And I was just kind of the bridge between these folks who were going places and, um, seeing needs.

And then these other organizations who could, could actually supply those needs. And so that was something, and I called it a passion project because it was something that I just saw. I was in high school. I lived in Miami, which is a big port city where people travel to and fro. And I noticed that, um, well, my best friend, like they’re in their home.

They hosted a lot of these like. Aid organization workers who would land here like make connections in Miami international airport to go somewhere else And when I was talking to them, I started hearing more about like the need for actual materials and how they couldn’t provide them all And so that’s where the idea came to mind.

So that’s why it’s a passion project It came from like my personal desire to meet a need And so when you think about a passion project, this is something that is available to you literally at any time. Again, I know we have freshmen, sophomore, juniors in the room. This is an opportunity that you could take advantage at any time to think about a need in your community and use your creativity, use your skills, your intelligence to put something together that could really help your community.

Um, and so again, I put it down as something you could do between 9th and 11th grade and obviously until even longer. Um, working and getting a job, again, you could do for all three. I look, I think if I’m not wrong, uh, you can start working starting at the age of 14 years old. And then there’s like different, like, you know, obviously qualifications and different, like, standards of how many hours you can work and why not.

But this is something that. You could start even in ninth grade where you can get a part time job. Um, I mean, I’m sure like there’s even smaller, like jobs that you even did maybe when you were younger, like a lemonade stand or cutting a neighbor’s, uh, the neighbor’s yard, uh, mowing their lawn and like all these different things.

And so. I would just put if you have any job experience, um, definitely put that there. And by job, I mean specifically like a paid experience, but you could also include an internship experience, which again, oftentimes, uh, might only be for 10th and 11th graders, but could also be for some ninth. Um, and the last two here are start your SAT, ACT prep.

Um, in ninth grade, you know, some students have started that early. Uh, in 10th grade, I highly recommend that you start your prep then and that you start taking your SAT, ACT your junior year so that you don’t have to worry about this the summer before senior year or during senior year. And then for sure, again, I would say take it by 11th grade just to decrease your stress.

Or, or, sorry, by 11th grade you should definitely start. your prep because you need to take it before your senior or before your appl your application dates. Um, which I think for the most part will be in November and January and so you want to make sure that you have started studying your junior year and that you don’t leave it to senior year.

And the last row here is making college visits. Um, and this is something you can do 10th, 9th, uh, or 9th, 10th, 11th grade. To be honest, while I was on Harvard campus, I saw little kids going on college visits, like, at the age of 5 or 6. Their parents were, like, showing them around. They had the shirts that said, future Harvard freshman.

And so definitely something you could start much younger. Um, but this is an opportunity for you with the knowledge of like your, your, I mean, if you’re here and you’re looking at CollegeAdvisor, then like college is definitely on your mind. So if you know, you’re wanting to go to college, making sure that you use opportunities that you might already have planned, like visiting a friend in another state or on a family trip and making sure that, you know, if you’re.

Passing by Boston, check out some of the schools there. Cross the bridge over to Cambridge, check out MIT, Tufts, Harvard. Um, if you’re in New York, you know, just look through the campus in Columbia or NYU or Syri or, um, or SUNY. Um, again, lots of different opportunities to use existing trips and existing opportunities to go to a different city to check out those schools that are available to you from 9th and 11th grade and especially during your summer breaks.

So that was a lot. Um, I just wanted to give you a little bit more of a comprehensive view of potential opportunities that you could do during your summer break. Um, so what do admissions officers want to see in this resume? And again, we talked about those opportunities to do during summer break, because ideally you’d be able to add some of those experiences into your resume, right?

Like I said, like if you had a job, if you started a passion project and so kind of coming back to. So what is all these things for? Right? It’s to be able to, one, gain the experience, learn, build and like develop your character and as you, as you like engage in those, and then also to be able to document them for the admissions officers to see.

And so, um, I kind of phrased or answered this question of what admissions officers want to see in a resume in two ways. The first is like, what do they want to see structurally? Instructionally, they want to see something that’s clear, like I said, distinctive, different sections. They want to see white space.

Um, again, it’s a little bit hard to fit everything in, but you want to make sure everything doesn’t look so squished up that to the eye, it’s just hard to read. Um, and then, like I said, diverse sections that are, you’re able to highlight different areas of your high school experience. The second, uh, way to look at this is what do they want to see in terms of content?

So, admissions officers often want to see longevity. Like, how long have you been working on something that shows, like, your level of commitment, your level of engagement. They want to see leadership opportunities. Like, were you Like so engaged that you also wanted to be part of the decision making body of the leadership of folks that had the opportunity to grow whether that’s a club or a sports team or an orchestra or something else into something that can Like leave leave a legacy there and that’s oftentimes leadership is an opportunity to do that an opportunity to lead others and to help others grow um, and so those are um kind of markers of just deep engagement, um, And then like I said before they want to see descriptions with numbers give them opportunities to remember Small bits of, okay, maybe not being able to remember exactly what you did and everything, but like, if a number stands out, then that’s something that can maybe help them to remember, oh, this person did this or that.

Um, so yeah, keep both of these in mind as you’re writing your resume. Amazing. Thank you, Maria. That was so helpful. And that is the end of the presentation part of the webinar. I hope you all found that to be as informative as I did. And remember, you can download the slides from the links in, or the link, excuse me, in the handouts tab.

So we’re going to move on to the live Q and A. I’m going to read through the questions you submit in the Q and A tab. I’m going to paste them into the public chat so you can see them. And then I’ll read them out loud before Maria can give us an answer. As a heads up, if your Q and A tab isn’t letting you submit.

Questions. Just double check that you join the webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing page. Um, and so it looks like the chat is pretty quiet right now. I do have some questions submitted before the webinar tonight. So I wanted to dive into those with you Maria.

Some, you know, more logistical questions around formatting in general. Is there an expected format for your resume? I know you went over kind of what parts of the resume you can include, but is there a standard format? Um, where can you find templates? that are appropriate for your resume? Where would you suggest looking?

Um, and then a third part of this question is, are there sections that you absolutely must include? So format to be expected, where can you find resources and are there sections that absolutely need to be included? Yeah, so I think this is like a good question to kind of summarize some of the things that I said earlier in the presentation of like, you do want to have distinct sections and Some of those sections that are, yeah, some of the sections that you absolutely should include are like, you know, some of your bio info, like you want to make sure you have your name and like contact information.

You want to make sure you have like your academics of like. What high school did you go to? What’s your GPA? Things like that. You definitely want to have dates to give a reference for when you did what activities. And then depending on what you’ve done, you know, you definitely want to include some section about like experiences that are academic extracurriculars.

You want to write some of your skills, um, like languages that you may speak, um, certificates that you may have. So like that, Could be like, yeah, skills, and some people merge that together if there’s not that many, and like, separately skills and awards. Sometimes people put that together being skills and awards.

Um, and then you could include, again, it’s kind of like a cherry on the top at the end if you want to include one line of like, interest. And, and that’s just something again, um, I know it’s definitely useful in a, in a job interview because if you have an interview, then like folks usually look at like, okay, what is maybe a distinguishing factor that I can remember about this person?

And usually their interests can be something, um, in terms of like the format again, it’s like usually one pager with multiple sections. Um, oftentimes it’s like, you know, not something that’s like middle indented or, you know, middle aligned, but like left aligned. And then the dates are right aligned. Um, just so that, again, if you’re taking up like a whole line to put the title of like what your title or your position was, then like, you’re kind of using that space to, to write like the, the, the location or the date.

And so it’s a way to kind of optimize time or optimize space, um, in terms of. You said one more thing. It was where to find them templates. Yeah. Um, so I looked at mine online and it was a little bit nerve wracking to try to determine which are actually official or like ones that like seem nice and good.

And so I heavily relied on my college counselor. Uh, in high school. Um, and Stacy, let me know if this is wrong, but I think CollegeAdvisor also has some templates and examples. I’m not 100 percent sure about that, but I would ask your CollegeAdvisor if there are some. I know with my specific students, I share the template that I used.

And so, that was an opportunity for me to like, I, you know, kind of like redacted some things and things like that that were like not very useful to them, but I was able to give them a format. Um, I don’t think I have the original template that I used, but I definitely have several versions of my resume that I was able to share.

And so I am almost certain that your CollegeAdvisor probably has one as well. And so, um, I would ask them, um, those are kind of the three part answer to that. Yeah, that was amazing. I, to go back to the template discussion, I totally agree with you. Definitely rely on your school counselors. If you’re working with CollegeAdvisor, your advisor is going to have, um, some resume resources available to suggest to you.

I’m with you, Maria. I tend to Use the one that I’m most comfortable with. And I share that with my students. I feel like it’s the, the one that I’m most comfortable with. And therefore I’m most comfortable advising students around using that particular template. Um, and it is an overwhelming experience to try to settle on the one, right?

Because you, the truth is I’ve used mine since I alluded to this earlier, freshman year of college, I’ve had the same format since, I mean, it’s definitely changed since then. Freshman year college, but um, it’s essentially a lot of the same fonts colors all of it So definitely overwhelming because it feels like such a big choice in some ways I can’t find a specific CollegeAdvisor resources at the moment, but I know there are a lot of webinar and Blog resources from CollegeAdvisor that talks about the different sections of the resume and resume building in general There’s a college resume walkthrough Thank you Online and so there’s definitely a lot of CollegeAdvisor related resources and relating to create it in relation to creating your resume Um, but I think that the takeaway here is that there are a lot of options for choosing a template um My best advice is to choose one where I think the thing that my students struggle the most with Maria and you know Let me know if you agree with this is um ensuring that it fits on one page And so if you have resumes that have a lot of free space, that might, if you have a lot to say, that might not be the right resume template for you.

So I would encourage you to really explore which templates fit your needs, given everything that you want to include. If you have a lot of awards, if you have a lot of coursework you want to talk about, Maybe you want a resume that utilizes space as efficiently as possible. And we did have a question in the chat about font size.

Maria, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Personally, I actually was just talking to a student about this the other day, literally yesterday. I think if it’s less than 11, size font, it’s way too small. And really, I’d like to aim for 12, if possible, size font. What do you think? I think so too. I have used to some degree, I’ve used 11 font, um, and I have used, um, small fonts for spacing.

So like if you make a space, I would like use like four, four fonts for the space. And so I have played a lot with the fonts there, but in terms of the actual words, I use, try to use. 12, if I really can, honestly like 11 and 10, but I really discourage the 10. I think if you can do 11, that is great. And then to try to make words bigger, I’ve done like the organization names in all caps.

That’s a great idea. Um, and I think, you know, just playing around with the font sizes of spaces, you can get really creative with trying to get your resume onto that one page. That all being said, conciseness is key for a lot of students. You know, you can usually say a lot, in a very short space. You don’t need maybe as much detail as you think you need.

Um, and so having a second review on your resume is sometimes really helpful if you can’t cut down on content. Um, so that was, that was a really great overview of the formatting. I think that’s the one of the number one problems my students have. Maria is getting everything onto one page and in the right.

format. Um, I also want to reemphasize too that that education should really be at the top for high school students. Um, that is your most recent endeavor and so education should really be At the top and not say after experiences in my in my opinion, would you agree Maria? Yeah, I think so too. Okay Um, this is a unique question.

What if there’s a gap in your experience? Um, maybe you took a gap year to do something abroad. How do you show that on your resume if it’s Maybe not a work experience or an extracurricular. What is your recommendation for addressing that gap on, on your resume and maybe touch on this in light of the grand scheme of your college application?

Yeah. So I think if you’re talking about Trying to address some of these gaps. I would say the resume is not necessarily the place to describe why there are gaps It’s the place to try to list as much of your experience in high school as possible to try to outline those things and then either in your essays or in one of the common app sections where you’re able to maybe add like extra information about like a additional I think Oh, it’s the year I took it.

Like, there’s definitely a section. So, like, if you have additional information about, like, your application, please, please list here. Um, I think that came back during COVID as well. Um, and so I would say those are the areas, like the essay or that section, where you, like, describe that, but it’s not in, you don’t want to take up space and word count on your actual resume to explain that.

Yes, I totally agree. I think it makes more sense to address it in that additional information or. Other parts of your application if you need to address it. Um, I will say that as a former admissions officer Seeing gaps on the resume or in your experience timeline could be a red flag And so don’t kind of gloss over it and not think that no one’s going to notice They probably will notice so it’s the better to address it head on and explain yourself Than to leave the admissions officer wondering what happened.

Um, another question about You specific, uh, extracurriculars that you might be pursuing or timelines, um, that might make your resume a little different than somebody else’s. What if most of your time is dedicated to a particular extracurricular and you don’t really have a lot of other things to say on your resume?

What is your advice to a student who feels that way? Yeah, so I think that oftentimes happens to students and it’s more of a, um, consideration to think about like how can you then build out the description and how can you build out like the opportunities that you did have within that, um, experience to grow as a person, to invest in other people, to, um, any accomplishments that you had.

And so it’s an opportunity to grow that section more than maybe somebody else would be able to, um, I know that like a lot of the students I’ve worked with have felt like they didn’t do as much, uh, or as many like diverse things. And that’s okay. Also, it’s lucky enough. The standard is just one page. And so it doesn’t feel like you have to fill out a book.

Like everyone is restrained to a page. And so I would just encourage you to, um, one, think about all the different things that you did do within that experience or that set of one or two experiences. And two, to think about like, maybe there’s another experience you’re not considering. I know that like, um, on the Common App, as part of the activities, you could also write like, taking care of siblings and caring for others.

That is a big responsibility that oftentimes doesn’t come to mind as a stereotypical, like, category of, of activity. Um, but it’s definitely something that you should include and that you should describe the ways in which you were, um, asked to be responsible and to like, lead or to deeply engage in a reoccurring activity.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I know you mentioned work earlier. Um, but a lot of students discount their jobs that they might hold and familial obligations when those in fact are valuable experiences and important for admissions officers to understand and as you’re kind of assessing. Your profile.

I think this would be a good time to discuss an opportunity with CollegeAdvisor. So CollegeAdvisors team of over 300 former admissions officers and admissions experts like Maria myself are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process and one on one advising sessions.

We’ve already helped over 6,000 clients in their college journeys. And after analyzing our data since 2021, we have found that CollegeAdvisor students are 3.6 times more likely to get into Stanford University, 4.1 times more likely to get into Vanderbilt University, and 2.7 times more likely to get into Harvard University.

So increase your odds and take the next steps in your college admissions journey by signing up for a free 45 to 60 minute strategy session with an admission specialist on our team. Using the QR code right here on the screen. During this meeting, we’ll review your current extracurricular list and application strategy, discuss how those align with your college list, and outline the tools you need to stand out in a competitive admissions world.

And so, again, if you really are not sure about your profile, uh, and what counts as college extracurriculars or important pieces of your college application, this might be a great opportunity for you, um, to begin that discussion with somebody on our advising team. That QR code is going to stay on the slide there.

Um, we do have a couple more questions in the chat. Uh, so what category on the resume, Maria, would you put a student exchange program? Yeah, so I would put probably in experiences. Um, That’s like an opportunity to write. And again, some people break that up into like academic and extracurricular, but like in experiences I separated as like experiences that you had versus like a job or internship.

Um, if you wanted to write it in terms of academics, because the pro the program was academics and I would definitely write it that way. If it was more relating to extracurriculars or activities that you did outside of that, then that’s another opportunity to, um, to, to write it maybe in extracurriculars instead of academics.

Thanks. Great. Totally agree. Um, another question in the chat. How often do you recommend updating your resume? Um, so I usually try to update it as soon as like I’m either one when I remember and like I try, I, um, recognize like it’s a new milestone, like a new year. Um, but I would try to, for the most part, do it every time you’re finished with like a, Um, like an experience to make sure you document it because it’s fresh on your mind.

Um, again, another big milepost is like at the end of the year, because then you probably have at the academic year, because you probably have an updated GPA, you probably are done with a set of activities. And so those are opportunities to just check in and to edit your, um, your resume. I love that advice.

I know it’s so hard, but every time you get an award or you start a new experience, you have a new summer opportunity that maybe you committed to, a new extracurricular in school, update that resume. It is the best time to update it because you don’t want to be sitting in front of your resume later thinking to yourself, What am I missing?

Because you will, you might forget. Um, so it’s definitely, whenever you get something new that you’re like, Oh, it would be great to highlight this to a college, put it on your resume. Um, are there any facts about oneself, extracurriculars, you should leave off the resume? Like something that would be a red flag to an admissions officer, in your opinion, Maria?

Yeah, so I think that there’s like a couple of things such as like, um, you know, you probably don’t want to write like I I’m an avid TV watcher or like Netflix feature I was like, you know, that is maybe like a potential place where you use your time but that’s where I would say like make sure that the things that you’re adding or adding to does this show hide responsibility and Increase like academic rigor or like a skill set of some kind an opportunity to serve others I would try to look at it with that lens and if it’s something that is Not helping others not necessarily edifying to your academic or extracurricular life um and not something that you are growing in leadership or in Responsibility then I would kind of think about whether that is I would consider that as a red flag Yeah, I totally agree.

I think another area that gets a little confusing is your interests if you include an interest line It’s totally okay to include things that aren’t necessarily Professional or academic in nature. So you should include things in that area like ice skating or poetry writing or Archery, you know things that maybe you aren’t doing In your academic or professional life, but could be really cool conversation pieces in an interview, for example.

And you never know who you might attract to your resume because of an interest that you’ve listed. Um, so definitely don’t shy away from that in worrying that it would be a red flag. Um, a couple of more logistic relating questions to the resume, pretty nitpicky questions, but I do want to ask them, should you include exam scores, like AP scores on your resume?

You could do that. It’s not 100 percent necessary. Again, you’ll probably, you’re going to report them to the college anyways, but it’s something that in like one line, if you wanted to add like your SAT, ACT, and then like, Maybe you’re like top AP scores or whatnot like those are just ways to highlight them on your resume, but Like, making sure that you’re not adding things that the school doesn’t, that the school you’re applying to won’t already get.

Thank you for touching on that again. Uh, and in addition, when it comes to the academics, how do you choose which courses you list on your resume, if any? Yeah, so, I would say, I don’t, like, I don’t often recommend writing your courses there because the school will get a transcript. And so, you would be using limited space and time.

Or, like, limited space and word count to write things that the school will already know and that don’t really add, like, I think an exception to that, uh, this is an important exception, is if in one of your classes you did something very specific that was, different from what other students did. So, for example, and this was, this didn’t happen to me in high school, but in college, one of my classes, I was able to write like this research report that ended up allowing me to go like talk to in a conference and allowed me to like be part of a publication.

And so that was an opportunity that came because of the class. I wrote it in the section about publications, but I also highlighted it as like a class in which I was able to do X, Y, or Z that was different than just like. Being a good student or getting a good grade, um, and so I think that’s an exception, but for the most part, I wouldn’t use, like, that precious, like, space for something that you can get from your transcript.

Totally. And I guess on the flip side, if you are struggling, To fill out information on your resume. It might be useful to include courses that are relevant to your interests But only if you don’t waste that precious space like Maria said on courses versus something else that wouldn’t be highlighted on another part of your application There is a question in the chat Can you add something that was going to occur in the future?

on your resume? Um, so for the most part I’ve like, I’ve heard the answer is no, like don’t include something that hasn’t been completed or done. Um, it’s different if like there is, you know, like The passion project that I worked on, like was, you know, we’ve done X, Y, or Z and have projected like working with, or like made a contract to like work with these organizations that will projected, like are projected to go to X, Y, and Z country.

Like that’s an example where the experience itself is not like forward looking. It’s more like one of the things in the description is to say like, Hey, there is longevity to this, even after this resume because I will continue. And so, but I think the short answer is like, if you haven’t done it yet, just think about, is it part of something that’s still ongoing?

I know the example here was like, uh, I think the, the student had taken like four years of Mandarin and therefore was going to China. I would, or like, it was relevant that they were going to China because this is like an opportunity to speak in the language that you’ve been learning. I would say, like, you could maybe write, like, um, with, like, you know, uh, um, I don’t know, like, plans to Here I would be a little bit careful, because I think The short answer is you shouldn’t write something that you haven’t done already.

I think there are ways to tweak the language to add, like, an addendum to your description that recognizes, like, something that you are going to do that very, like, tightly intertwines with what you’ve already described. I think you shouldn’t make any, like, big category something that you haven’t done yet.

Like, if you’re saying, like, next year I’m going to join, like, XYZ club, that XYZ club should not be on your resume. But if already in an existing club, you are making plans and like, maybe you were the person leading those plans. So like you were like designed the logistics to, um, travel to China to like, uh, to like test my language skills, like next year.

Like, that’s something that you could say, like, I’ve already developed the plan. Um, and so that is one way to kind of get around that and to say that you are going to China. Um, So I think, sorry, that was a little bit twisty as I tried to figure out what that answer was, but I think that is one way to get around it.

I totally agree with you. So, if you can easily add it as, as you said, an addendum, because you are committed to something in the future in relation to a current group or extracurricular activity, um, I get this question a lot when it comes to research papers, like if you’re going to be publishing a research paper, you can say something like, preparing an abstract.

planning to submit research paper to this journal or journal is currently in review of my paper, something like that. Um, but in general, if it hasn’t happened yet, don’t put it on the resume. Uh, a couple of other nitpicky questions. Do you, in terms of the personal pieces at the top of your resume, what do you include there?

Can you include your address and do you recommend a personal picture? for your time. Um, so I didn’t do a personal picture, um, but I, I haven’t heard that, like that, like advice against that. Um, I know I didn’t want it to be part of the space taken up, um, but I do, I did include my, uh, name. My address, like for mailing purposes, and my cell phone and email.

Yeah, I agree with you. I think, for the most part, for U. S. based applications, a picture is not necessary. If they want a picture of you, they will ask for one. Um, and so, Again, precious space is precious. So even with that personal information, I try to keep it all on one line, email, phone number, address if relevant.

Absolutely agree with that advice. Maria, closing out here, do you have one takeaway or additional piece of advice? that you’d like to leave students with today? Maybe something that you’ve seen recently in your view of a resume that you’re like, well, don’t do that or definitely do that. Anything at the top of your mind?

Yeah, I think I would just reiterate some of the things that I mentioned earlier, which is try to start earlier and don’t be scared to like build it out and then decide what you want to include later. Um, Like how you’re going to narrow it down. I would say starting earlier just gives you that benefit of the doubt to be able to, um, do that without the stress of the application process right upon you.

Um, and then to also try to include as many numbers and statistics as possible to paint a picture. like a clear picture of what you’ve done. Yeah, really great advice. I don’t think that the statistical and numerical inclusions are something that a lot of students consider. So this will hopefully put you all ahead of the game.

So that is the end of the webinar this evening. Thank you all for coming out tonight, this afternoon, wherever you are this morning. And thank you to our panelists, Maria, Such a pleasure as always. Um, we had a really great time telling you about crafting a winning college resume. If you’re looking forward to some other webinars with us, here is our January series.

We have a lot of great webinars coming up. This is one of a few that have kicked off the new year. Um, Maria, thank you for being with us to do that. We hope you all have a great rest of your day and thanks again for being with us. Bye everyone.