Hello all, I am a junior and starting to think more about college apps. I am passionate in business, entrepreneurship, medical field, fashion & travel, politics & economics. Those are my main passions but I am having trouble explaining that in my resume. I started my own business with all of the money I had and went full force into it. The business was made to sell the t-shirts i designed (thus, the fashion part coming in) and then giving a part of the proceeds to help save the turtles charities since I love the ocean and sea turtles. I have traveled and wrote about my journey to 9+ countries ( this one would maybe hurt me?..), I have a successful travel & fashion blog ( I make money off of it) where I got to be in the HCBN blogger network and the Smart Girls Blogger Group (I had to apply to be in these). I am an assistant executive/chief of a new startup magazine. I have owned and started mini-businesses since I was 10. I helped in the Rick Scott campaign last year. I am the MVP for soccer varsity at my school since I was a freshman (i honestly think i could get recruited but, i don’t want to play in college). I am the secretary of my 4-H group where we help clean up beaches and other things.
I just named a few of the more unique and “big” things, I have other common stuff like student gov., good grades, NHS, and all that.
How can I make my resume look more clear and concise to get them to see my passions??? I really am a passionate and driven person and I would love for them to see that about me through my resume.
One of the best ways to make your resume perfect is to refer sample resumes that are listed in various online sources as approved for quality of content structure. Having a clear idea of writing pattern and format is work half done and referring veteran’s work is best solution to reach that level.
OP: let me play devil’s advocate. A 16-17 year old is simply not passionate about seven things in the eyes of most college application readers.
You need to seriously edit and focus how you come across. Resumes are rarely considered – most colleges look at the Common App. There, you’re allotted ten ECs. It’s up to you to decide how to present yourself concisely.
Your travel and concern for charity and fashion is interesting but not central. I’d highlight your a) successful blogging experience; one EC item with a few words to describe it, b) depending on how wide the audience, perhaps your start up magazine, c) your sports (4 yrs varsity, 4 yrs MVP is a great honor) and d) one or two lines about some of your businesses/entrepreneurship – maybe.
You can add the NHS and 4H as other items. You don’t need to fill up all ten slots. Indeed focus the reader on nos. 1 and 2 – these should be your most meaningful ones.
I frankly don’t know if SteveJones has ever even seen a Common App EC section to be advising you what he’s advising.
^I second what T26E4 said, except the claim that colleges don’t look at resumes. They actually do if you get it to them, but there no longer seems to be any place to upload your resume on the Common Application. If your desired college has a form for additional documents and you think you have enough activities to justify a resume (which is really helpful for them in terms of seeing everything you do at one view), have a clean one-page layout with your most important activities on there, along with two or three lines describing what you did for those activities. It can look really good.
A resume often has a lot of duplication with the Common App, which is a headache for the admissions officer to review. If you feel you need to give more details on an activity, use the Additional Info section to concisely bullet additional info on the activity.
Just a note that not all schools use the Common App. I looked at this thread because my D is currently preparing a resume for one school that only uses its own app and requires a stand alone resume to be submitted.