Lesson: Review and update your Academic Résumé.

As you begin the second semester of your freshman or sophomore year of high school, your ‘Academic Résumé’ provides a critically important one-page overview of your academic, extracurricular activities, work experiences, leadership, community service, and awards accomplished thus far in your high school career. You must maximize the opportunities to develop a ‘high quality’ résumé prior to beginning college applications as a high school senior for selective institutions that offer admission to less than 50 percent of applicants (e.g., UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, University of Maryland, Northeastern, UT-Austin), or highly-selective institutions that offer admission to less than 20 percent of applicants (e.g., Ivy League, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, MIT, Duke, UC Berkley, and CalTech). Applications to these schools will occur between July 1 and January 15 of your senior year. While schools with January deadlines provide an opportunity for one additional semester of achievements, your best admission and scholarship opportunities will require that you apply Early Action or Early Decision, which will occur between September 1 and November 15 of your senior year. Unfortunately, thousands of high school seniors did not pay sufficient attention to building their résumé throughout high school and fail to make themselves competitive candidates for admission to their top choice colleges or for competitive scholarships.

Note:If your GPA or test scores are unusually low, record them on the master copy of your résumé for review by your advisors, but remove your GPA and test scores prior to submitting your résumé as a supplement to college or scholarship applications.

After reviewing/updating your Academic Résumé, ensure that you share your document to cpc@collegeplanningcohort.com.

If you have created your résumé using the Résumé Builder on our website, you should transfer your information into a Google Document, which will provide greater flexibility in making adjustments to the formatting of your résumé for college and scholarship providers. For example, you may choose to make adjustments to your résumé to profile your employment, leadership, or community service based on the focus of a particular college or scholarship provider.

Following are 5 Google Documents of students with varying levels of accomplishments. Review each document and choose the one that would work best for you:

  1. Resume Sample 1: Focus on Community Service
  2. Resume Sample 2: Broad Involvement
  3. Resume Sample 3: Focus on Leadership
  4. Resume Sample 4: Focus on Athletics
  5. Resume Sample 5: Focus on Work and Service 

After selecting the résumé that works best for you, and take the following steps:

  • Go to the ‘file’ menu of the résumé that you have chosen to modify and  select ‘copy’
  • Rename the new file with your name
  • Share your new file to cpc@collegeplanningcohort.com (by doing so, we will be able advise you as you are transferring your information and developing your résumé)

If you replace the information with your information, line by line, the document will maintain its format settings.

Add your updates:

  • Academic:Update:
     

    • Current weighted and unweighted GPA
    • Highest SAT/ACT Scores
    • Dual enrollment or early college classes, credits, and GPA
  • Employment:Update:
    • Change in employment
    • Supervisory positions
    • Employment opportunities created for yourself, such as baby sitting, cutting lawns, and tutoring
  • Community Service:Update:
     

    • Community service through extracurricular activities
    • Community service projects of nonprofits that you started
  • Extracurricular Activities:Update:
    • School-based clubs, sports, and organizations
    • Faith- or community-based clubs, sports, organizations, or activities
    • Place leadership positions at the beginning of the line for each activity
  • Honors and Awards:Update:
    • Academic honors
    • Varsity letters
    • Honor Society induction
    • Special athletic, service, or leadership recognition

If you have created a résumé using our Résumé Builder, and do not choose to create a new Google Document format, following are the instructions for accessing and updating your résumé.

How to Access and Use the Résumé Builder

  1. Click onto the ‘Account’ menu at the top of the page
  2. Select ‘Resume Page’ from the dropdown menu
  3. The résumé that you develop is assigned to your username and will be accessible as long as you are enrolled in our program

Information Menu: Enter your name, phone, email, and address with correct capitalization, e.g.:

  • Kimberly Hadaway
  • P.O. Box 70457
    Marietta, GA 20007
  • cpc@collegeplanningcohort.com
  • 678.395.5825

Activities, Experiences, Education, Community Service, Awards, Etc. Menu:

  • When you first open the Resume Builder, you will be able to add information into the blocks beneath the following headings:
     

    • Education/Career Objective
    • Education
    • Community Service/Employment
    • Extracurricular Activities
    • Honors and Awards
    • Skills
  • In the TEXT BLOCK, beneath the ‘Education/Career Objective’ caption, you may add a career description. If you choose not to add a career description, you may click onto the ‘X’ to on the top right side of each box to delete the boxes from your résumé
  • In the first DETAILS BLOCK, beneath the ‘Education’ caption, enter your information in the following manner:
     

    • Enter the year that you began and year that you will end high school (e.g., 2018 – 2022), in the Dates field
    • Enter the name of your high school in the Company/School field
    • Enter the City, State (e.g., Atlanta, GA) in the Position field
    • If you have attended more than one high school or have taken dual enrollment classes at a college, enter all of the information as you did above into the second DETAILS BLOCK
  • In the first DETAILS BLOCK, beneath the ‘Community Service/Employment’ caption, enter your information in the following manner:
     

    • Use a separate DETAILS BLOCK for each community service or job, beginning with each activity in which you are currently engaged in (i.e, ‘Present’ is in the date). Activities in which you have been involved the longest are listed first, e.g., 2006 – present; 2013 – present; 2018 – present.
       

      • Enter the time period (by year) that you were involved, or have been involved, in the activity (e.g., 2018 – 2022), in the Dates field
    • Enter the name of the activity or company in the Company/School field
    • Enter your position (e.g., Captain, President, Volunteer, Clerk) in the Position field
    • Describe the activity in the text area, e.g., I served on the College Planning Cohort Youth Leadership Board
    • Repeat these steps for each community service or job
  • In the first DETAILS BLOCK, beneath the ‘Extracurricular Activities’ caption, enter your information in the following manner:
     

    • Use a separate DETAILS BLOCK for each extracurricular activity, beginning with each activity in which you are currently engaged in (i.e, ‘Present’ is in the date). Activities in which you have been involved the longest are listed first, e.g., 2006 – present; 2013 – present; 2018 – present
       

      • Enter the time period (by year) that you were involved, or have been involved, in the activity (e.g., 2018 – 2022), in the Dates field
    • Enter the name of the activity in the Company/School field
    • Enter your position (e.g., Captain, President, Volunteer, Clerk) in the Position field
    • Leave the text box blank
    • Repeat these steps for each extracurricular activity
  • In the first DETAILS BLOCK, beneath the ‘Honors and Awards’ caption, enter your information in the following manner:
    • Use a separate DETAILS BLOCK for honor or award, beginning with each honor or award that you have received. Use a date range for multi-year awards, such as varsity letters, honor roll, etc., e.g., 2006 – present; 2013 – present; 2018 – present.
    • Enter the name of the honor or award in the Company/School field
    • Enter your type of award (e.g., varsity letter, first place, etc.) in the Position field
    • Repeat these steps for each honor or award
  • Expanding the Resume Builder: The following boxes at the bottom of the Resume Builder allow you to add details, headings, or text boxes:
     

    • Add Details
    • Add Heading
    • Add Text
  • You may remove boxes by clicking onto the ‘X’ in the upper righthand corner of any box
  • You may move boxes by clicking onto the 3 lines in the upper lefthand corner of any box, next to the name of the box, and dragging the box upward or downward
  • DO NOT FORGET TO SAVE!
  • Select ‘Save Resume’ when you done with your editing
  • Select ‘View Resume’ for an onscreen view of your resume
  • Select ‘Save as PDF’ to print your resume, or for a view of how your resume will look when printed
  • You may return to the Resume Builder at any time and select ‘Edit’ if you wish to make corrections to your resume

Skills Menu: This area is optional and should only be used if you have developed unique workplace skills or recognized gifts and talents in athletics, music, art, dance, theatre, etc.