Key takeaways
- A student resume should include your contact information, education, an objective/summary, and a combination of extracurriculars, volunteer work, internships, work experience, skills, and hobbies that best reflect you.
- To create a student resume that really stands out, stick to professional fonts, keep the design clean, organize your information with bullet points, use color sparingly, and always save your resume as a PDF.
- Use a free student resume template from GDOC, Canva, Google Docs, or Microsoft Word to make the process seamless.
A student resume is a great way to show colleges a quick overview of your grades, activities, leadership, volunteer work, and interests. In this guide, we will cover what to include, how to strengthen what you already have, and even share a free template to help you get started.
What is a student resume?
A student resume is a one-page snapshot of your biggest accomplishments, experiences, and skills from your high school years. It’s a quick way for colleges to see who you are, what you’re interested in, and what you’ve excelled in apart from your grades. As a bonus, a lot of this information can be reused for future job applications and internships, as long as it is still relevant.
What should you include?
Even if you feel like you have very little experience under your belt, do not sell yourself short. You have done more than you probably realize, and you can include it all on your student resume! The key is knowing what colleges are looking for and how to best organize the information. Here is an overview of everything that should be included in your resume:
- Contact information: Name, address, email, and phone number
- Education: School name, GPA, honors classes, AP courses, awards
- Resume objective/summary: Three to four sentences that highlight who you are and what you hope to achieve
- Extracurriculars: Clubs, sports, and groups you’re involved in outside of school
- Volunteer work: The causes you are involved in and how you give back
- Internships: Hands-on learning experiences related to your career goals
- Work experience: Any paid job that shows responsibility and hard work
- Skills and hobbies: Strengths, talents, and interests
An in-depth look at each section—with examples
We will start with the three must-have sections that every student resume should include: your contact information, education, and student objective.
Contact information
Resumes should always include your contact information. This means your:
- name
- physical address
- email address
- phone number
- any social handles you’d like to share
Make sure that you use an email address that you wouldn’t be embarrassed about a future employer seeing (e.g., johnsmith@gmail.com). Some people include a photo, but this is not required.
Education
This section will need to include the name of your school in bold. Underneath, you may include:
- Your high school GPA
- Any awards, honors, or similar accolades you have received
- Honors classes you’ve taken
- AP courses you’ve taken
Resume objective
This is a three to four-sentence summary that is typically included at the top of your resume–kind of like your elevator pitch. This should give a quick picture of what you’re working toward, including your career goals, education goals, and other relevant information to showcase who you are as a student.
Additional resume sections
These additional sections will build out the bulk of your resume by highlighting your involvement, skills, and interests. This will help colleges get the full picture of who you are as a whole person. You only need to include the sections that are relevant to your experience and goals. Quality matters more than quantity. As you include each of these items on your resume, you should also add the dates, relevant achievements, honors, recognitions, and responsibilities.
Extracurriculars
These include sports, clubs, and other groups you’ve taken part in. If you’ve earned awards, such as “Athlete of the Week” or other honors, make sure you include that! If you currently don’t have any extracurriculars to add, read about some that will get you noticed.
Volunteer work
Do you help at a local community center or church? What about picking up trash on the weekend? Colleges love to see students who are active in their communities.
Internships
If you participated in a high school internship, make sure you highlight that in your resume! Not only are they a great learning experience, but they also show colleges you are motivated and willing to take initiative.
Work experience
It doesn’t matter if you babysat, worked at your local pizza joint, or worked in a professional office. Even if it doesn’t align with your future career goals, work experience still shows responsibility and hard work.
Skills and hobbies
List out your skills and hobbies in a bulleted list. These could include things like foreign language expertise, problem-solving, communication, organization, creativity, computer skills, coding skills, and more.
Tips for formatting a student resume that stands out
As you are writing and designing your college resume, keep these quick tips in mind:
- Utilize free templates: While you can certainly start from a blank page, there are plenty of free templates on GDOC, Canva, Google Docs, and Microsoft Word.
- Keep it on one page: This ensures your information stays clear, concise, and easy for colleges to scan quickly.
- Choose professional fonts: Stick to clean fonts that are easy to read. Popular fonts include Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman.
- Only include relevant information: The more you try to add, the more cluttered it will look. Choose what best supports your educational and career goals.
- Use bullet points: Other than the opening summary, organize your information using bullets so that it is easy to read through.
- Incorporate color sparingly: A pop of color is fine, but try to stick to no more than two to keep it professional.
- Save your resume as a PDF: This is to ensure it looks the same whether it’s opened on a computer, tablet, or phone.
When to submit your college resume
Once you’ve covered everything in the list above, wait to submit your resume to colleges until you have a parent, guidance counselor, or trusted adult proofread it. A second set of eyes will help you catch typos and grammatical errors that you want to avoid. Plus, they just might help remind you about an accomplishment you didn’t think of. Only after you’ve taken this extra step should you submit your resume to colleges. Some colleges will request it directly on the application, while others may just include an optional upload area.
Begin building your college resume today
Don’t feel like your resume is fully fleshed out yet? That’s okay! There is always time to add more. This is the perfect time to join clubs, volunteer in your community, apply to internships, get a part-time job, or pick up a new hobby. If you’re still struggling to write your resume, make sure to brainstorm with your peers, a teacher, a guidance counselor, or your parents. Most adults in your life would have written their fair share of resumes. They may be able to point to some experience or skills you have that you didn’t think of on your own!
Once your resume is ready, take the next step and see where it could take you. Use College Raptor’s FREE College Match tool and get personalized options to find your best-fit school.
