Updated: November, 2022

Submitting a résumé with your college application can be an effective way to share more about yourself with admission officers. There will be a space for you to list your different activities on the main college application, Common App. However, this section only allows students to list ten activities and write 150 characters for each activity. This amount of space will be sufficient for some students and very limiting for others. If you think you’re a part of the latter group, consider putting together a college résumé. Before you begin writing yours, check out our five big mistakes to avoid.

 Make Sure Your Colleges Allow You to Submit a Résumé

Some schools welcome students to submit a résumé, while others prefer applicants submit just the normal activities section on the application. You can check on your schools of interest in two ways. The first is creating a Common App account and adding colleges onto the application. Once you add the schools, you can click on each of them on the left-hand side, click Questions, and look to see if there’s a space that says, “If you wish to submit your résumé, you may upload it here.” There’s usually an “Upload” button underneath it.

The second way would be to look up all your colleges’ admission websites and see if they list a résumé as one of the application requirements or if you are able to upload one to your applicant portal after submission of your application.

 Think Twice Before Listing Pre-High School Activities

We get this question a lot: “What if I played piano until 8th grade?”

A general rule of thumb is to list activities and accomplishments starting from your freshman year of high school. Admission officers are more curious about what you’ve done recently rather than what you were interested in a long time ago. One exception to this rule could be listing activities that you started pre-high school and continue to do now. By including these, you can show you’ve made a deep commitment to an activity as opposed to a passive commitment. Another exception is if you had an outstanding accomplishment pre-high school. For example, if you won a state or national competition in piano in 8th grade or starred in a popular sitcom, you could consider listing it.

At the end of the day, you should be more focused on what you’re doing now rather than relying on past activities.

 List Everything First and Cut Later

Students sometimes feel like some of their extracurriculars aren’t good enough to put on their résumé. While this might end up being true, we highly encourage students to list everything first and then decide later. Take some time to think more deeply about your activities. You might find that certain ones that you originally questioned are actually a great reflection of who you are. You won’t know until you mull it over for a bit, and if you never list the activity, you might end up forgetting about it later. Give things a chance and give yourself credit for the great things you’ve done.

Don’t Go Without a Plan

You’ve listed your activities. Now what? Do you just plop them onto the résumé? Before doing so, come up with a plan. What are the qualities you want admission officers to take away from reading your résumé? Do you want them to know you have extensive experience in the communications field? Do you want to highlight your strength in coding? Consider different skills or qualities that are important to you and use them as categories to group your activities together on your résumé.

In a Résumé, Looks Matter

If you look up examples of poorly formatted résumés versus well-formatted résumés, you’ll quickly get the idea of what we mean here. You could have wonderful accomplishments, but if you present them in an unprofessional-looking way, your readers may not give those accomplishments the credit they’re due.

Some of the keys to a nice résumé format include proper grammar and spelling, consistent use of fonts (including size, bold, italics, etc.), consistent punctuation, and proper spacing. Thankfully, there are many free templates available on Google Docs, Word, and other sites. There is no one right way to arrange a résumé. Sometimes people will even get a little creative with theirs. Before you get any ideas, make sure yours looks clean and easy to read.