When you apply for a scholarship, you usually need to send a scholarship resume along with the application. Scholarships are competitive and scholarship committee members have to read thousands of them each semester. To stand out from everyone else, you need to create a college scholarship resume that highlights the best moments of your years in high school. Some universities, colleges, and scholarship organizations may require applicants to write and submit an essay along with their scholarship resume.
A scholarship resume is a document that sums up the academic achievements and extracurricular activities you gathered throughout high school. Scholarships are a big investment, so selection committees need to know that they are choosing well when accepting a scholarship application. The resume is supposed to reflect what you’ve been focusing on as you near adulthood and the start of your career. With the best resume, you need to define why the selection committee should choose you by detailing your academic experience.
There are different resume formats you can use for a scholarship resume, depending on how much work experience you have. Each scholarship you apply for will have different requirements and emphases, so you will need to tailor the resume differently each time. Regardless of how you personalize your resume, there are five elements you should always include:
The header contains your contact information. It needs to be placed at the top so the scholarship committee members can find a way to contact you easily. Include your full name, phone number, and email address. Depending on your major, you’ll also need to include links to your portfolio or networking profiles like ArtStation or LinkedIn, if you have them.
The scholarship objective is the introduction of the resume. It’s a short paragraph that summarizes your academic record, volunteer work, achievements and career goals. The scholarship resume objective should only be 2-3 sentences long, so narrow down the best parts of your resume and include them in this section.
The extracurricular/work experience section is where you list all the jobs you’ve had as well as any volunteer work, after-school clubs and internships. Scholarship selection committees want to see what you’ve been up to most recently, so list your jobs in reverse-chronological order. This means that you start with your most recent job and then go backward from there. Try to list only the most relevant full-time/part-time jobs and internship experience related to the field you want to major in.
Of course, if you performed community service or have volunteer experience that had little to do with your major, include it anyway, especially if you took on any leadership roles. So long as you took the initiative to participate in such activities, the selection committee will want to see it.
The education section of the resume is relatively straightforward. Name the high school and your expected graduation date if you are still a high school student at the time of sending the resume. If applicable, include any technical courses or special electives you took. Typically, you want to avoid including your GPA unless the selection committee specifically states that you should.
If you made the Dean’s List or were in the honor society, this is where you mention it in the resume. This section of the resume covers any accolades you’ve received. However, this section isn’t limited to educational endeavors. If you received awards through other venues, include them. Here are some examples of achievements you can include:
If you don’t have any work experience, you don’t need to include a work experience section in the resume. Not all students work before going on to higher education, so work experience isn’t a strict requirement for all scholarships. If there was a specific reason that limited your ability to work, you could mention it in your cover letter or personal statement.
Scholarship resumes are usually one page long, though some information can extend the resume to a second page. Usually, there aren’t any word count limits because the information in everyone’s resume will vary. Still, you can check the details of the scholarship you want to apply to and see if there are any page or word count limits.
Yes. It is a good idea to personalize your resume if you are submitting to multiple scholarships. Different scholarships help students in different ways. By personalizing the resumes to fit what the selection committee is looking for, you will have a higher chance of being chosen for the scholarship.
