Do I Need A Resume for My College Application? — Examples & Template

If you are a teenage prodigy who spent your spare time in high school interning at a cancer research laboratory and founding a charitable organization that distributes prescription glasses in Zimbabwe, then being asked to formulate a resume for your college application might sound like a perfectly natural proposition. It’s quite easy to summarize your prodigious achievements in resume form if you happen to be a wunderkind with a list of accomplishments longer than most MacArthur Fellows.

Yet, for 17/18-year-olds who happen to be mere mortals, the task of writing a resume might feel as absurdly impossible as being asked to perform an act of alchemy. Tasked with magically creating pure gold from a menacingly blank document, crazed thoughts begin to flood your mind: The only people agonizing over a resume should be middle-aged executives who were downsized after a hostile corporate takeover, whatever that is…I’m a senior in high school for crying out loud—I go to school and work the cash register at CVS in the summers. What more do you want from me!?

Try to take a deep breath as you emerge from your Mike-Judgean nightmare and back into reality. In the following article, we will explain everything you need to know about college application resumes, including:

• What goes into a college application resume
• College application resume examples
• Resume template & length
• Which colleges require, consider, and do not accept resumes
• Whether resumes are required for scholarship consideration
• Whether resumes are required for Honors College applications
• How to decide whether to include a resume

What goes into a college application resume?

A resume for your college application, otherwise known as your high school resume, should demonstrate the “big picture” of who you are. It’s essentially a summary of what you’ve done, assembled in a way that serves as a snapshot of your greatest achievements. It’s also a space for you to expand on your most important activities and achievements in a way that isn’t possible in other areas of your college application.

College application resumes are typically comprised of the following core sections:

Contact Information

Your full name, home address, email, and phone number should be at the very top of your college application resume. The header of your resume should have all of this information. This includes any LinkedIn page or personal website that showcases your achievements.

Educational Details and Academic Accomplishments

Colleges are academic institutions, so first and foremost, they’re interested in your academic performance. Start your college application resume with your education. In this section, you’ll want to include the full name of your high school and the dates of when you attended. This is also where you’ll include your GPA, your AP or IB courses, your ACT or SAT scores, and your class rank, if it’s significant.

Awards and Honors

Any academic and extracurricular accomplishments that you’re proud of should be listed here, whether it’s first prize in a district-wide writing competition or the Most Valuable Player award in your tennis team. If you have captured a number of impressive national, state, or local awards and were unable to fit them in the five spaces available within the Common App honors section, then your resume is a wonderful opportunity to share more about these achievements in glorious detail.

Extracurricular Activities and Work Experience

To better understand you as an applicant, admissions officers want to know where you spend your time outside of school. Accordingly, any extracurricular activities, leadership roles, sports, volunteering, internships, part-time jobs, or even unique experiences studying or working abroad should be included in this section of the resume.

Similar to the honors section, the Common App activities section has notoriously strict character limits that can make some activities frustratingly difficult to fully convey. If you weren’t able to capture the full scope of your involvement in a certain activity on the Common App, you’ll be able to do so here. That said, elaborate on your achievements and experiences with brief descriptions in bullet points, not in lengthy paragraphs. Admissions officers will want to read clear and concise descriptions that are straight to the point.

Special Skills and Interests

Let’s say you speak more than one language. Perhaps you’re proficient in multiple coding languages or software platforms. This part of the college application resume is where you should list those hard skills.

College Application Resume Examples

Putting together the resume for your college applications can be a tedious process, so it’s best to pay careful attention to every line. As you go, you’ll want to focus on the format, style of language, brief but concise descriptions, and crucial details. Let’s dive into two examples:

College Resume Example #1

For a very standard and no-nonsense college application or activity resume, take a look at the following student. This type of resume may be best for students who are required to submit a resume as part of their application but have little information to share that has not already been included on the application itself.

Dakota Lee
909 Park Avenue
Portland, Oregon
(012) 345-6789
[email protected]

Education

Bloomington High School, Class of 2024
GPA: 3.85

Work Experience

• Book Camp Counselor, Creative Kids Summer Camp: 2022-Present
  • Lead students (K-6) in all camp-related activities relating to literature immersion.
  • Organize art projects three days a week with senior counselors.
  • Coordinate students’ final art show for parents.
• Research Intern, University of Oregon, Department of Anthropology: 2023-2024
  • Assisted graduate students in their anthropology research 4 hours every week.
  • Presented my own literature and anthropology research findings once a month.

Extracurricular Activities

• President, Student Anthropology Club: 2021-Present
• Vice President, Bloomington Book Club: 2022-Present
• Team Captain, JV Tennis Team: 2021-Present
• First Chair Violinist, Symphony Orchestra: 2022-Present

Awards

• High Honors List, 2024
• Principal’s List, 2023-2024
• National Honor Society, 2021-2024
• Most Valuable Player, JV Tennis Team, 2023-2024

Skills

• Languages: Spanish, French, Japanese
• Computer Skills: Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe Photoshop

College Resume Example #2

This college application resume includes more details than the resume above. If submitting a resume is optional but you’d like to do so in order to share more details about a particular activity, this type of resume is the way to go.

Jon Jackson
678 Orange Street
Austin, Texas
(123) 456-7890
[email protected]

Education

Springfield High School, Expected Graduation: May 2025
GPA: 3.98
AP Courses: AP Calculus (5), AP Physics (5), AP Macroeconomics (5), AP US History (4), AP Spanish (4)

Awards

• High Honors List, 2021-Present
• AP Scholar with Distinction, 2024
• National Honor Society, 2023-Present
• Representative of the Year, Austin Chamber of Commerce, 2024

Experience

Austin Chamber of Commerce – Student Representative, 2022-Present

-Served as representative of public schools across the city of Austin, advocating for student
perspectives on Austin’s economic initiatives.
-Developed campaigns and city-wide initiatives to encourage more student involvement in local
elections, distributed pamphlets door-to-door to invite neighborhoods to participate in city-wide
census polls.
-Relayed information from commerce meetings back to our school district.
Advocated for the support of small businesses.
-Created a bimonthly “Student Visit Day” to continue open communication between decision
makers and high school student leaders across Austin.

Activities

Editor, The Springfield Weekly, 2022-Present

-Lead and manage 10 writers and editors to produce our school’s weekly paper.
-Initiated a weekly column that focuses on areas of local community improvement; recognized by the mayor.
-Established a social media presence to share daily opinions on current events.

Freshman Mentor, All Hands On Deck, 2024-Present

-Selected to mentor five freshman students at local low-SES high school.
-Coordinated monthly activities to give students more access to educational and extracurricular resources.
-Led an initiative with 4 local small businesses to offer short-term shadowing opportunities to students.

Dog Rescue Volunteer, 2021-Present

-Promote monthly adoption events and animal rescue awareness using social media.

Skills

• Languages: Spanish, German, Arabic
• Computer/Programming Skills: WordPress, Adobe Photoshop

College Application Resume Template

To get started on your college application resume, use the below resume template:

Your name

Home address, City, State
(Your) phone number | [email protected]

Education

High School Name, City, State, Year of Graduation

GPA: Your score ￭  SAT: Your score  ￭  ACT: Your score

AP/IB/Honors/College-Level Coursework: Names of any relevant classes

Awards/Honors

• Name of Award, Date awarded

Description of your award (if context is needed).

• Name of Award, Date awarded

Description of your award (if context is needed).

Activities & Experiences

Your role, Name of Organization, Dates of Participation

• Description of your experience.

Your role, Name of Organization, Dates of Participation

• Description of your experience.

Additional Skills

List any hard skills that are relevant to your overall college application.

How long should my college application resume be?

One to two pages should do the trick. It’s tempting to want to make your resume as long and informative as possible, but remember that college admissions offices are looking through thousands of applications. Keeping your college application resume concise will only work in your favor. It’s also a great exercise for future job applications.

Do all colleges require resumes?

No. Actually, many colleges don’t even accept them. Let’s begin by looking at universities where admissions officers would rather poke their eyeballs out with a plastic spork than review an undergraduate applicant’s resume:

Colleges That Do Not Accept Resumes

A growing number of colleges do not accept resumes. For example, the University of Virginia explicitly states: “We do not accept resumes, research abstracts, or writing portfolios.” In 2018, Duke University adopted a similar ban on resume submission for undergraduate hopefuls. Yale is a smidgen less concrete, warning that, “Generally speaking, applicants should not submit additional résumés, except in the case of professional employment experience in the performing arts.” The New Haven gatekeepers go on to elaborate that they have zero interest in hearing about more than your ten most recent/important activities already included elsewhere in the application. Tufts University is another elite institution that is a full-fledged member of Team No-Resume, stating that “we are not able to accept a supplemental resume of activities.” MIT recently discontinued their acceptance of resumes as well, noting “Please use our form, not a resume, to list your activities.”

Before you submit a single resume with one of your applications, carefully read the admissions homepages of all of your prospective schools to make sure that they don’t have comparably discouraging language.

Colleges That Consider Resumes

Columbia University will consider resumes but encourages applicants “to convey the breadth and depth of your extracurricular pursuits within the Activities section of your admission application.” Only in extreme cases is it necessary to include a separate document. Similarly, Penn will accept resumes but only in exceptional circumstances: “Students who have completed notable academic research should use the activities section or additional information sections of the application to convey these achievements. If, however, there is a brief abstract or explanation of your work that you could not include in other required parts of the application, you may submit this document as a supplementary material through your Penn Applicant Portal.” 

Similarly, Georgetown University considers resumes. However, since their application allows for very little detail, we recommend submitting a resume in most circumstances.

Colleges That Encourage Resumes

The College of New Jersey says that “applicants are encouraged to submit an Activity Resume to detail involvement in clubs and organizations, employment, internships, volunteering, education, etc.” NJIT encourages applicants to the Albert Dorman Honors College to submit a resume, but does not place the same expectation on traditional applicants. Washington State University asks undergraduate applicants 25 years and older to strongly consider submitting a CV, but they do not have the same demand of the regular applicant pool.

Colleges That Require Resumes

While many universities used to require the submission of a resume for all incoming students, regardless of major, it is rare to come across such a mandate in 2025. Florida State University is one of the more prominent schools that still falls into this category. Otherwise, at most schools, only certain programs or majors will require a resume. For example, Cornell University’s prestigious School of Hotel Administration require you to submit a resume with your application. The vaunted Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester has an identical requirement. Artistic resumes will also be necessary for all pursuits within the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theater & Dance. Finally, the University of Wisconsin-Madison only demands a resume from prospective undergraduate business students.

Do scholarship applications require resumes?

Many private scholarship applications will request or require the inclusion of a resume, so if you plan on applying to one or more such third-party contests, it will be necessary to create a resume, even if your prospective colleges do not ever desire to see it. However, before you dedicate too much time to applying for private scholarships, revisit our article on How to Find College Scholarships for a breakdown of where most scholarship money actually comes from and how you can position yourself to receive the most aid possible.

Do Honors College applications require resumes?

Some do, or at least strongly encourage it. Florida International University’s Wilkes Honors College requires one, stating “Please make sure your resume highlights your involvement in activities that demonstrate your leadership skills, participation in service,  or commitment to intellectual curiosity and/or creativity.” The College of Charleston’s Honors College also flat-out requires a resume. The Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin goes even further, requiring an expanded resume that practically begs for detail, advising applicants that, “This is NOT a place to be overly concise.” Clarkson University’s Honors Program requires a resume as well.

Should I submit a resume alongside my application?

This is the essential question that applicants need to ask themselves when debating whether or not to submit extra info to a “resume-optional” institution. There are, after all, plenty of admissions officers who get annoyed at the inclusion of extraneous submissions from an applicant. When you are responsible for sifting through the 108,837 applications at UCLA and a student has included a dozen writing samples and a seven-minute video about their passion for LARPing, annoyance may only be the tip of the emotional iceberg. To a (slightly) lesser extent, the inclusion of a student resume that restates everything verbatim already laid out in the activities section of the Common App will also cause consternation for super-busy admissions professionals.

A fair way to weigh whether an optional resume adds any value to your overall submission is to make a list of the impressive things about yourself not included anywhere else in your application. If that list ends up containing nothing of actual committee-swaying quality, consider shutting down the whole operation. If there are indeed brag-worthy achievements on your list that, for one reason or another, cannot be included in the regular application and are resume-appropriate, fire away.

Final Thoughts & Additional Resources

If your prospective colleges give you a black-and-white answer to the question of resume submission, then simply follow their directives. If one or more of your potential schools encourages enclosing a resume with your college application, then go ahead and create one, remembering the tips outlined above. Chances are that a resume will come in handy at some point during the application process or soon after.

Looking for more Common App preparation? Consider checking out the following:

• How to Complete the Common App Activities Section
• How to Complete the Honors Section on the Common App 
• Common App Essay Prompts 2025-26
• 10 Instructive Common App Examples 
• How to Brainstorm a College Essay