Sample Resume for US College Applications
this is a sample resume / activity sheet for US College Applications. it belongs to my friend Andrew Loh, also known as Kiasu Andrew, who is currently pursuing his degree in Political Science with a concentration in Islamic & Arabic Studies at Swarthmore College, one of the best liberal art colleges in America. the reason behind his nickname will be immediately clear once you look at his resume:
the resume speaks for itself, but just to give a little bit of advice on resumes for college applications:
a) STRUCTURE: this is a good place for you to give some structure to some kind of hobby/talent that you have developed but doesnt have a place in a traditional application. one of mine, for instance, was event management. back in school and college, i used to organize a lot of events, fundraisers and parties. i organized an average of 3 major events a year, most of which were for charity. it seems like a really random ‘talent’ to want to channel time and effort into, but it was something i truly enjoyed doing and was very good at. so i had a category called ‘Event Chairing and Organization Experiences’ in my resume, and in italics i would put the amount of money i raised for charity though my event. it emphasized the fact that event management is a developed hobby of mine that displays initiative (giving birth to ideas for new events), leadership (chairing of events), community significance (raising money for charity) and diversity of talent (not many people have event management in their resumes!).
b) THE HOOK: when putting together your resume, as well as the rest of your application, a very important thing to keep in mind is whether you are choosing to present yourself as an all-rounder, or a very specific kind of applicant. ask yourself if you have a talent that is SO developed, that it is enough for you to make the adcoms at the Ivies sit up and say, ‘we want this kid’s talent!’. an example would be a sport that you excel in and represent the state/country for, or mathematical and science ability that is heads and shouders above your peers. take this talent and make it the backbone of your resume, but ensure that you have enough awards/achievements to support this ‘main talent’ or ‘hook’ as we call it. it should be so that when someone looks at your resume, they know instantly what you are best at.
if you dont have an extremely prominent hook, it’s okay, but you have to dig around and determine which is the most defined of your talents/achievements. mine was writing and debating/public speaking, and this was the backbone of my resume. but if you ask me, i think i was more the all-rounder rather than the specialized applicant. which brings us to…
c) DON’T CLUTTER: a big mistake for college applications in general is cluttering it up with random activities and awards in a panicked attempt to buff up your application. dont make this mistake in your app, and also in your resume. i’ve seen sample resumes that included silly things like: ‘Delegate at XYZ Event - a participant at a discussion panel on youth study skills by renowned speaker ABC Tan’ when in fact these ‘events’ are SPM ceramahs where anyone can get in with an RM 10 fee. i mean, seriously, putting in things like this and also some random pantun award from Std 6 is going to highlight the fact that you actually have nothing significant to bring to the table, and worst of all, makes you look like an exaggerater who cant be trusted.
do away with small events and awards that have little to no significance. these things only serve to distract from the achievements that really matter. even if you dont have a lot to put in your resume, it’s better to have quality than diluted quantity.
d) THE BULLET POINTS: if you look at Andrew’s resume, which is done in an excellent format by the way, you’d see that the bullet points are what lends the most impact to each activity. this is where you tell the adcom exactly what’s so cool and significant about how you choose to spend your time. should you have the information at hand, here are some things you could put in bullet points: amount of money raised, hours in a week spent developing this activity, national ranking, exclusivity, pioneership if you spearheaded the project, and if not immediately obvious, the job scope.
the above section was extracted from Part 1 of my guide to US College Applications. the full post can be found here.