<p>I’ve read in a few places on this forum that a student should have a resume to present to teachers when asking for recs and in other instances, but I’m completely clueless as to how she should put this together. What does such a resume look like? What does it include? Any responses would be gratefully appreciated.</p>
<p>Start with your school’s college counseling department. What you need is school specific actually. How does your department handle the application process and the letters of rec??? I’d start by finding out about the school profile the department sent out this year and work up from there.</p>
<p>“Start with your school’s college counseling department. What you need is school specific actually. How does your department handle the application process and the letters of rec??? I’d start by finding out about the school profile the department sent out this year and work up from there.”</p>
<p>They don’t have a counseling department. This is the school where the GC is an 80-year-old priest who had a stroke last year. Father’s assistant places transcripts into pre-addressed and postage-prepaid envelopes, but that’s the extent of it. Father doesn’t handle recommendations at all. The students have to do that on their own. Also, my daughter is applying to a few private colleges and Father doesn’t approve of private colleges, so he doesn’t provide anything beyond transcripts for those kids. The vast, vast majority of kids from the school attend the local CC or attend local schools like St. John’s, so there isn’t a lot of information available and no process at all.</p>
<p>Z, I don’t know if maybe you can leverage this, my D has had a resume since about junior year of high school or so. I am not sure who told her how to put it together - I think it was originally created for coaches recruiting, but, basically, it’s something like this:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Header - name, address, phone, commercial email (don’t use yahoo, gmail, etc.), ICQ</p></li>
<li><p>Standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, SAT IIs)</p></li>
<li><p>School - name, address, city, phone of school, gpa, weighted and not, class rank, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Sports - broken up by which sport, what position, how many years, win/loss record</p></li>
<li><p>Community - volunteer work, out of school competitions, certifications, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>Honors/awards - separate from sports (this is stuff like NHS, other types of awards)</p></li>
<li><p>Press coverage, website links, etc. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>This is all from memory, but D keeps it updated, and has an addendum called an “academic strategy” or something like that - goes with the resume, I do not know why.</p>
<p>Zoosermom:</p>
<p>Katherine Cohen of Ivywise (the infamous person behind the Kayvaa Wiswanathan saga) has an example of a resume in her book Rock Hard Apps that many on CC found useful. We did not follow the example.</p>
<p>There are two kinds of resumes. One for the GC and one for the colleges. There is a great deal of overlap between the two. Since the (non-)GC is not being very helpful, let me suggests two different types of resumes:
The first is to help the GC by providing as much information as possible, including some that the school ought to have; this reduces the amount of research that an overworked and not very knowledgeable GC must do.</p>
<p>What we did:
–listing S’s courses and grades. He had taken many in college and these did not appear on his school transcript; for the college courses, we listed the course titles as well.</p>
<p>–SAT and PSAT scores as well as APs scores.
–any honors, awards he had gotten.
–Extra-curricular activities, including positions and time spent per week, averaged out. Some activities require a burst of work at certain times of the year. Also include description. For example, under “volunteer in hospital, 10 hours a week,” you might provide more specific details.
Sports go under the rubric of ECs, as do arts. They do not have to be school-based. For example, being part of the Scouts or being active in a church-related activity all count.
–Summer activities, whether they be academic programs or being a lifeguard.
Hobbies.</p>
<p>Finally, our GCs like to ask for ways in which we parents would describe our kids.<br>
Since your GC is not writing recs, there is not much point in providing anecdotes that could be used as the basis of a personalized rec "xyz took the initiative in launching the program that we still use to tutor struggling kids; xyz struggled with health problems in 9th grade, but is now on an upward curve)</p>
<p>The resume for the colleges would not need to include things that will appear on the transcript, nor the anecdotes. My S did include his hobbies and at both interviews he had, one hobby became a conversation starter.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>
<p>EDIT: I just saw LTS’s post. Good tips there! I would also include date of birth in case someone else has the same name or one that is very similar.</p>
<p>Thank you so much late to school. I’m going to ask her to start with a plan like that.</p>
<p>Marite, thank you for clarifying the different types of resume. We are just a tad clueless, and your post also reminded me that the absence of help from the GC is going to be a problem. Oy.</p>
<p>Zoosermom:</p>
<p>We usually say that certain things are better said by a GC (such as mitigating circumstances). But you might use the information and give it to teachers to incorporate in their own recs. For example, your child’s English teacher might not know that s/he spends x hours on the sports team, plays the violin, helps out in the homeless shelter, etc… So give a resume to the teachers as well, and provide them with the kind of anecdotes that will help them make your child into a “real” person. Sometimes, the anecdotes can involve a class with that particular teacher; they are a way of jogging their memory (for a paper on such and such, xyz did research in the local historical society’s archives, interviewed old folks, etc…)
Finally, some of the information can be used in the essays, with a light touch if it is meant to “explain” a weak performance. </p>
<p>Many GCs do little more than what your GC assistant does! But it’s good that you are starting early.</p>
<p>I threw together a resume too when I asked teachers for recommendations. It had most of the stuff already listed: GPA, activities, awards, classes I was currently taking, etc. The only thing that I didn’t see mentioned is future plans. At the bottom I added my first choice school, intended major and career plans, etc.</p>