@eandesmom …that sounds like a whole different story than what is described in the article and I think he can write that story. Has he started to write it yet so you can see it?
I think there is a way to communicate the warm, small details that set into action a whole change of outlook. One can avoid the cliche “I never knew how good I had it” type of thing by writing effectively and taking a whole different slant on the story.
@srk2017 Glad to hear that your son and his team received medals! For those who do mention the International Medicine Olympiad in their college apps, how heavily do you think the results will be regarded by admissions?
Does anybody have a link to some good sample high school kids resumes?
Son17 has a resume done, just finished it today. It has all the basics, school info, clubs, work and service,athletics, hobbies/interests/, relevant skills, awards/honors etc.
I just want to see some different layouts and how much wording to use.
Thanks.
Good for you folks that were able to convince your kids to go and do some service work. I know a few kids in town that went with their church group to a trip down to Miss. to help some needy people. They liked doing it. We don’t really go to church, we ski a lot and play club soccer and lax on Sundays, awful I know, so my kids were never invited on something like that. I think it was eye opening for some of my son’s friends. My son17 felt he had done enough by tutoring kids in school. That was as much service work he thought he had time for and wanted to do. I said fine, just roll with it and see what happens. We do not have a requirement at our public high school for volunteer work.
@RightCoaster I posted this upthread but this thread moves so quick I think it might have been missed by you.
activities resume I sent my D this and told her to pick a format from the samples at the bottom of the article. I think any would work. Once she picks one I’ll help her create the formating in word or google docs so she can add her details easily. http://www.riversidemo.com/recreation/page/harts-helpful-hint-top-ten-dont-dos-college-application-resume
D17 volunteers at our town’s children’s hospital. What She likes the most is the summer camp program. During school she volunteers at the kids’ karate program. She is naturally good with little kids and is normally the baby sitter at family parties where there are little ones. So this volunteering experience suits her well. The kids in the program have certain health issues here and there. But they are mostly well cared for. I can imagine D might get a different perspective if she can get a first hand experience in much less fortunate regions. But of course we are not in any way prepared to have her do any mission trips.
Sigh I am reporting to you all from the Land of Re-assessment.
With a little more than 3 weeks to go before senior year begins, D17 seems to be feeling caught between what she feels like she “should” be interested in and what she actually wants to do, which is… she doesn’t know. Her maybe interest in engineering turns out to be pretty maybe indeed, spurred as it turns out a lot by well meaning people telling her she “should” look into it because she’s such a strong math and science student. So we’re pretty much back where we started from 6 months ago with, “I like math and science but I also like a lot of other things and beyond that I have no idea.”
I told her the good news is that if she doesn’t want to apply to places that have specific colleges of engineering requiring the Math 2 subject test, she can at least consider herself finished with standardized testing. And it also re-opens up a lot of school options that had been previously cast aside for a lack of an engineering program. Of course, more options is not necessarily a good thing, haha, I’d been hoping she would be finalizing her list at this point, not practically restarting the process. Ugh. :-<
She does have a summer assignment for English to write a draft CA essay, so at least that will happen within the next couple of weeks (thank goodness.) Big congrats to those of you who already have applications out the door!
@picklesarenice Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Smith. My D did really like her visit there and she will definitely apply, but I don’t know that we will be able to swing it financially unless she’s one of those lucky 4%. I dunno if a 33 ACT is enough to get someone in the running or consideration for merit at Smith, so she’s going to have to temper her expectations on that front.
D17 has had friends go to India, Costa Rica and Mexico for service/mission trips. I do wonder how much it benefits kids in India to have rich white teens play with them at VBS for a week.
@SincererLove yep, only one lottery ticket school on D17’s list, as well.
Speaking of which, MIT’s application site has crashed ^#(^ We didn’t do it, we swear. We were just looking at it, lol.
900 pages! goodness…
I think we figured out the Alabama thing-she did the application for the application, got the cwid, did the application (like we thought). The status for the scores is blank, so I need to poke around on the bama forum to see where to see if they got her scores.
University of Maryland’s application isn’t open yet.
What do you write for the purpose of a resume if you just making it for colleges to see when you come for an interview
Should my son include his SAT score on it
@MotherOfDragons I’m hoping UMD opens tomorrow. D is reusing her Common App essay for that one.
@fun1234 the samples in the article I posted didn’t include any sort of purpose statement or scores.
@mtrosemom I missed the post about Eagle somehow but congrats! What a wonderful accomplishment. My S19 is working towards his, it’s exciting to see boys ahead of him complete theirs and none of our troop class of 2017 is done yet so how exciting!!!
@carachel2 I have seen his first draft, he will be responding to prompt 4 and showing how he’s taken that experience to identify solutions (or really contribution to solutions ) in everyday life in meaningful long term commitment kind of ways and the importance of both the big and the small, and how that now that translates into his career path. It needs work but the idea is sound, but definitely some editing to do. He was working on draft 2 last week, I’ve not seen it since any editing. Killer first paragraph but the rest needs love lol.
I don’t think it’s cliche but worry that is parental bias.
@stlarenas I did see those samples and honestly as the creator of CV’s for about 80 technical experts in my field as part of my job, and the interviewer/hiring manager of many over the years I wasn’t overwhelmed and a few made me cringe. I would NOT suggest anyone use the table format. That’s a personal opinion but…no. Restating the transcript is unneeded. Succinct is critical. I will structure his layout, he won’t care and it’s his content not mine. I did noodle around with a ton of samples for form, format and layout ideas. We will keep it to one page.
Re: resume.
My son used LaTeX as it allowed for flexibility in layout. Hopefully LaTeX means something to someone and can be used if the fit is tight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX
He had a lot to say, but it all fit on one page. Using LaTeX looked overly complicated to me but he was able to make more adjustments than I can in Word.
He listed the category down the left, and then indented each listing under the category. Categories were: Academics, Skills, Extracurriculars, Awards & Achievements, Research Experience, and Community Service. There is a lot of white space going down the left and a lot of dense text on the rest of the page.
He included GPA, SAT, SAT II & AP Scores under Academics. He did not list grades, but instead years (2013-present, 2015-present). There were a lot of initials, but he spelled out the organizations’ names the first time each appeared. (NACLO, USACO, CSAML, JETS…all math & science)
He developed the format on his own, and I proofed and insisted on parallel structure. I also insist he include activities that were not just math & science (Debate, Quiz Bowl, Track & XC). I would like him to appear as a bit more well-rounded than he would like to present himself! His Quiz Bowl team of four members earned 7th or 8th in the nation at some national quiz bowl tournament in Texas, and he wasn’t even going to list quiz bowl as an activity.
@eandesmom I wasn’t especially impressed with them either. However it made me feel a lot better to see them because they look like something that kids would do. And I’m ok with that. And that link gives me the confidence that most AOs will be ok with them too. Idk…maybe I should be more concerned but I’m not. I really doubt that this one page PDFs is going to make or break an application. Personally I’d rather not risk the AO thinking “Mom did this…wonder what else she did too?”
I’m not concerned with the resume format either. My son just used a template from Pages on his Mac. It looks fine. I just wanted to see how kids grouped and listed certain items. My son will make a few tweaks to it and be done soon. I don’t think it needs to be a masterpiece, just a well presented form that the administration peeps can easily review and get a quick overview of the student, in one place.
LaTex means something only to mathematicians and physicists.
These days even science journals take Word file submissions. Physics journals used to take only LaTex.
I used LaTex for my PhD thesis, certainly beats the typewriter! =))
I now use Word for my resume 
@payn4ward – as I wrote, it looked overly complicated to me but I was amazed at how much he fit on one page. I am probably using an outdated version of Word on my Mac, as I could never accomplish this in Word.
Older son’s resume was typed in Word and we were looking to fill space…probably still, even after two years of college!
@eandesmom I was glad to read your comment about those resume formats, I strongly disliked the table formats. I also think a high school student needs to figure out a 1 page layout. 2-3 pages is overkill for a teenager.
@MotherOfDragons MyBama says that S’s test score was received, in the “application summary” under requirements. If yours is empty there, maybe call them and see if the score report wasn’t matched to your student properly?