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See Tips On How To Create A Valuable College Scholarship Resume
Your scholarship resume is part of your lifeline for finding internships, co-ops, and even scholarships during your college experience. It needs to highlight all of your most impactful experiences and help demonstrate who you are, so you want to ensure it is as organized as possible and only includes relevant information. Most scholarship applications do not have an interview aspect, so what you show on your resume and application is all the reviewer will know and judge.
I used to struggle with building a resume, but now my resume has gotten me several thousand-dollar scholarships, which you can read more about here, and several internships. Keep reading my top five tips on creating a strong resume to impress scholarship evaluators.
Elements of a College Scholarship Resume
The purpose of your resume is to highlight key points about yourself and allow your qualifications and experiences to be seen. You are summarizing the reviewer’s involvement and technical and interpersonal skills. A typical scholarship resume includes the following categories:
- A header should include your name, contact information, email, and address (if the application requires it). Do not include images of yourself on your resume. Many scholarship applications use anonymous reviewing.
- Academic Background—List the high school or college you are attending and the dates of attendance. If you are in high school, specify accolades like being in the top 10%. If you are in college, highlight your major, minor, or distinguishing program.
- GPA/Test Scores – List your GPA and the highest test scores that the application asks for
- Extracurriculars/Volunteer Experience – List any clubs, extracurriculars, or volunteer work you have completed or are engaged with.
- Leadership Experience—I separate leadership experience from extracurriculars so that it stands out. List them here if you held positions such as president, co-chair, advisor, etc., for a club or ongoing event.
- Job Experience—If you worked part-time, had a shadowing experience, worked with a mentor, worked full-time, or had an internship, list those experiences here. If you have multiple or too many to fit, keep the ones that have skills most relevant to the application you are applying for.
- Skills – Include any software, interpersonal, or technical skills you have.
With the parts of a resume now covered, we’ll dive into the detailed tips about creating a scholarship resume to wow reviewers.
Resume Building Software
The right design software can make all the difference when crafting a resume. Canva offers an intuitive drag-and-drop interface with a vast library of templates and design elements perfect for crafting eye-catching resumes without any design expertise. Microsoft Word or Google Docs are also some of the most common software for resume building!
Whether you’re a design novice or a seasoned pro, these tools can help you create a resume that effectively showcases your skills and experiences.
Resume Building Advice
Limit listing high school activities, if possible.
If you’re in high school, focus on listing high school experiences—scholarship evaluators expect this, so don’t stress about including anything beyond that. However, college students should avoid relying on high school achievements to fill their resumes.
This can be challenging for first-year college students since campus involvement is still new. Don’t panic—most scholarship applications consider your grade level and understand you’re just starting out. Get involved with organizations and seek leadership roles early. For example, I joined two major clubs in my first semester and secured leadership positions by the second. By your second semester, your resume can reflect this involvement. It’s possible to earn scholarships as a freshman even with high school experience—I did, which led to a full ride!
If you’re no longer a freshman, high school activities should mostly be removed from your resume by your sophomore year unless they were significant internships or major awards. Scholarship reviewers want to see what you’ve accomplished in college, not achievements from years ago. Get involved with campus clubs, both academic and leisure, and aim for 1–2 meaningful leadership roles you can maintain throughout college.
From personal experience, evaluators prefer seeing deep involvement in 1–3 organizations rather than minimal participation in many. Balancing your time and being actively engaged shows more decisive leadership and commitment. Time management and focused involvement are key to building a standout scholarship resume.
Limit your resume to one page.
Most recruiters will only look at one page or side of your resume. I’ve even heard first-hand stories of reviewers tossing out and shredding resumes that were longer than one page. Stop and think about what things are critical that you have been involved with, and try and only keep recent involvement and experiences on your resume. Early in your career, you won’t have much job or professional experience that warrants another page. Once you graduate and have more experience, having a slightly longer resume becomes more acceptable.
If you have the issue of having too much content, go through and cross out any experiences or skills that do not directly connect to the type of application you are completing. For example, if I were completing an engineering-based scholarship, I’d remove any random retail part-time job experiences I had and only keep my engineering internships listed.
Go to your college’s career services center or teachers.
A lot of colleges offer free resume reviews for students on campus. Set an appointment with them to have a campus professional look at them. They gave me great advice about headers for my resume, how to order things, and what bullet points I should omit. It usually takes less than 5 minutes. These people are a great resource because they typically have an interviewing background, a strong English knowledge base, and know directly what evaluators are looking for. If you don’t want to go to career services, get some friends together, swap resumes, and peer review each other’s papers instead!
If you are in high school, stop by your advising office or find an English teacher willing to help! Your teachers are some of your best high school and college resources, so contact them when you need help. They are likely waiting for a student to go to their help hours to ask questions.
Use bullet points
Another important scholarship resume tip is that you want to be short and to the point while still listing essential details about your involvement. Look up power words and phrases online to help you only include essential terms on your resume. I limited myself to three bullet points per item. Recruiters do not want to read life stories, so keep it strong and straightforward.
now your experiences
I include this tip because this might be one of the worst blunders and embarrassing traps students fall into throughout their college career fairs and interviews.
Be sure you can discuss the things you list on your resume.
Typically, people with longer resumes in college list every minuscule thing they had engaged in and then cannot discuss what they did with an organization. Even worse, some people try to fake experiences (like holding a position on a club’s executive team) and fall on their faces when asked about what they do (or worse, the interviewer or scholarship reviewer knows you are lying – yes, they can find out by asking your college)! Don’t fall into this trap!
Please only include things on your scholarship resume that you are ready to defend or explain in great detail, and have significant experience with.
These tips will help you create a strong resume for a scholarship application or job opening. Although resumes are standard, they can be challenging to craft. Set aside time every few months to update your resume so it’s ready to go whenever a scholarship opportunity arises.
As I mentioned, your resume is one of the many factors that determine how evaluators determine who will proceed to the next round of scholarship awards. Therefore, keep your resume up-to-date and as polished as possible.
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