Resumes and Essays - Can't Live Without 'Em

Ok, so resumes and essays probably sound like death. But think of it this way: a resume is a way for you to brag about how cool you are (in a snapshot), and an essay is a way to expand on your greatness! :)


Resumes
You will be asked to provide a resume for some college and scholarship applications. If they don't ask for it, don't send it, but if it is optional, go ahead and provide it. Why not give them more reason to pick you? It shows that you are professional and go the extra mile. A resume will also be helpful when you want to apply for a job.

To start out:
The top of your resume needs your personal information. Your name (you can include middle initial if you want) goes first, followed by address, phone number (home or cell or both, if you have room, but designate which is which), and email address. Note: make a professional-sounding email. You can make a free email address at gmail.com or other free sites and then have those emails sent to your normal email account, if you want. I'd highly recommend making one now, not only for your resume, but for more official correspondence. If you are emailing an admissions counselor at the college you really really want to go to, you'd probably rather use janedoe@gmail.com than twilightfreak@gmail.com. :)

So here's what you want the header to look like:

Jane Doe
123 Somewhere Road
Someplace, CA 12345
(123) 456-7890 - janedoe@gmail.com


After this heading comes the meat of the resume:

Some people include an intention or objective at the top, telling what kind of job for which they are looking. I personally did not want this in my college and scholarship resume, since it seemed tacky to me to have "Objective - to earn this scholarship" or "to gain admission to this college," but you could use it on a job resume, as in "Objective - to gain a sales position at Payless ShoeSource."

Ok, here's what you have to have:

First comes education.
Include your recent school and dates attended, when you will graduate and the type of diploma you will receive (if you have that option). You can also include your cumulative GPA.
Next, you can list any other schools you have attended for high school ONLY.

Now you'll include your honors, awards, and memberships:

--Awards, honors, and special recognitions (but please, high school only; I don't think they care if you won the sixth-grade spelling bee, unless it was the Scripps National Spelling Bee.) If it was a very very special award, you can go back farther, but you might consider mentioning it in your essay if you can't fit it in your resume and it meant a lot to you.

--Memberships in any special honor societies (Spanish Honor Society, National Beta Club, etc). And I know, lots of people get invited to the National Society of High School Scholars, but honestly, you just pay sixty dollars for the title. It won't really do anything for you, but if you want to include it, go for it.

--Volunteer work: Colleges and scholarship foundations LOVE to hear that you have volunteered. Again, try to keep it to ninth grade and up, unless you started it earlier. For example, if you've been volunteering at the soup kitchen since you were in seventh grade, list that. Even if you stopped in the tenth grade, it's still worthwhile. I suggest keeping a notebook and writing down your volunteer hours. List date, start and end times, what you did, and with whom (by yourself, with a church or school group, etc). This will help you in your resume writing (some scholarships ask for how many hours you have participated in each activity).
Try to have consecutive items of volunteer work, such as working at the library one day a week or doing several things with your youth group. You could also include mission trips; I included a week-long trip to help rebuild in the Gulf Coast.

--Clubs. These can be school-sponsored or community groups. Include any positions of leadership you may have held.

--Sports. These can include school teams and recreational league teams. Include years and any leadership positions.

--Church groups. Youth group membership, choir or musical group, or teaching a Sunday School class or Bible study are all things you can add. Showing that you can be committed to a group is helpful to the committee reading your resume.

--Internships. If you can get one (especially in a field that you'd like to pursue), great! Ask around - your best bet at finding a mentor is probably through a friend of a friend. You could also ask at your school if they have any kind of program that matches you to a mentor. Include name of company, dates of internship, and a brief description of what you did.
You may consider asking your mentor if you can put some kind of contact info for them on your resume or list them as a reference.

--Job experience. This includes paid work such as babysitting, petsitting, and yard work, preferably if it was a steady job. You should include title of job, dates (month/year to month/year), and a brief job description. If it is for a more formal job (e.g. customer service in a store), you can list the name of the store.

--Other important and relevant information. Did you do something great, like starting your own business or running a charity? If it is something big, you might want to put it in your essay, but you can always mention it in your resume.

Other things I didn't include in my resume, but you might want to:

--Special skills: foreign language proficiency, computer proficiency and certifications (if not listed above), etc. This is another thing that is more for job applications, but you could consider it. You could also include talents such as playing piano for 8 years or something like that, but make sure it is relevant to what you are applying for.

--References (especially on job applications): You could write "available upon request" or have them on a separate sheet attached to the resume. However, make sure you actually have all your references lined up, so that you can list them. DO NOT list a reference without speaking to him or her about it!

Ok, so once you have all this info, you are going to have to compact it. In every resume-building class I have had, one major note was this: your resume needs to be ONE PAGE LONG. You can play with margins, play with font size (but don't go under size ten), and change font to an extent (but probably Times New Roman is your best bet). I ended up with really strange margins (like 0.3 inch) and compacting all my information a lot.

So here's how my resume was set up. You are welcome to modify it to make it look how you want and to save space.

header
-----
education
high school
month/year to month/year
graduation month/year, type of diploma
gpa:___

honors, awards, and memberships
list of honors, awards, memberships, etc. and years of induction or award

experience
(i listed my internship here, but you don't have to do this)

volunteer work
organization name
job title - dates - job description

school and community organizations
advisory council
name of position, dates
club
name of position(s), dates, job description


*********************************************************************


Wow, that was a lot of information. Now for even more!
ESSAYS!!! (eek!)

Just kidding; I don't think essays are as scary as they may seem. At the beginning of my senior year, my English teacher had us research a few colleges to which we wanted to apply and find out what kind of essays they wanted. Many colleges will ask for a personal statement (don't worry, we'll get to that), while others are more specific, asking several questions or having a question that seems totally random (for example, a few years ago the University of Virginia asked students to describe an invention or creation from the past that was important to them).

My number one piece of advice is to...commit this to memory...SAVE EVERYTHING!!! Save all your essays, even little drafts that you later want to get rid of, even a paragraph that you start to delete because it is over the limit, EVERYTHING! It probably sounds crazy, but all you have to do is cut and paste it into a word file and save it somewhere else. Then, when you are stumped for inspiration on an essay, you can go back and read the other stuff that, for whatever reason, didn't quite make the cut.

Another reason to save everything is that you will probably be able to recycle essays. I know that I had one essay that I modified and used for - I'm not kidding - probably 15 different applications. It was a really good essay, but it was also really versatile. It was about my internship, which was in the field I want to pursue in college and which I also qualified as volunteer work. That way, I could use it in major-specific scholarship applications, scholarships based on volunteer work, and general scholarship applications. I also combined it with some information about my leadership in organizations, so that I could use it for a leadership and volunteer work-based scholarship. And I saved each different mutation of the essay under the name of the scholarship for which I used it. That way, if I had a question just like another I'd had earlier, I could go back and find it. It might seem like a lot of bother, but you'll find it saves you time and brainpower when you don't have to write so many essays!

That essay was one that I originally wrote for a scholarship. It was a good essay because it started out with a quote that drew the reader in: "Do you like chicken nuggets?"
I went on to explain that I was asked this question by a little boy whom I was tutoring during my internship. We had a silly conversation before working on his math work, and I was able to bond with him and encourage him specifically. From there, I wrote about my love of teaching and learning, and how I wanted to inspire children. Finally, I closed my essay by saying, "I will try to always remember the little things that matter...even chicken nuggets." I modified the middle of this essay several times, but I kept the storyline, the beginning and ending with the chicken nuggets, intact. It drew the reader in and was creative. Yes, I am proud of this essay. :)

Another essay I recycled was my personal statement. A personal statement may sound daunting and open-ended, but really, the reader just wants to know about you: what drives you, what struggles have you had, what makes you tick. It doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be) and autobiography); for most of these essays, you'll want to write a page or less, so check the word limit. Sometimes it is helpful to start with a quote, personal anecdote, song, famous quote, etc. You want to draw in your reader.

For my personal statement, I again started with a quote (yeah, I like doing that), but this one was different.
"You're useless," said the voice in my head.
A little startling, isn't it? But it was supposed to be. I went on to discuss my struggle with chronic pain and, specifically, when I went on a work crew trip to the Gulf Coast and had to look for things that I could do within my limitations. I then spoke about what I learned and what had happened to me since that time.
This essay wasn't quite so light-hearted; however, it spoke of me. It was who I was and where I had been, and it showed that clearly without being self-pitying or too dark. I used it on several open-ended essay questions, as well as a question about dealing with difficulty. You can be really personal or not so much. It doesn't have to be a big problem, like having cancer or something; you can just talk about something that makes you who you are. It could also be a memory or a story from your life. In short, they just want you!

Be patient with your essay writing. I know it can be frustrating; sometimes you may just have to walk away. You might want to write a few drafts of an essay and merge them together, or scrap something altogether and rewrite it (that's how I ended up with the chicken nuggets essay).

Make sure you have someone proofread for you. Ask that person to be honest and offer suggestions. You could even have several people read it. I'd advise that you don't ask your best friend; chances are that he or she will not give constructive feedback (unless your best friend is a grammar freak like me). Ask an English teacher, counselor, or parent.

Other things to note:
--Stay within the word limit. If they asked for 500 words and you send three pages, your essay may not even be read. You may have to delete some words to stay under the limit, so you need to be choosy. See if you can take out some words that are not needed (or even a sentence or two) or combine some words. Just make sure you keep your main ideas.
--Read all the instructions. Make sure you answer all parts of the question and give all required information.
--Play with your spacing and margins. You don't want to leave a lot of white space if you are asked to write one page, but you don't want size sixteen font, either.
--Even though you have someone else proofreading it, you still need to read over it and make sure you like how everything is written and that it sounds like you. Also, make sure your essay is written to whom you want it to be written. In other words, don't mention how you'd love to go to Harvard or you'd be honored to receive a Kiwanis Club scholarship when it is going to Yale or to the Rotary Club. This may seem obvious, but it really does happen all the time. And really, you can leave stuff like that out unless it is integral to your essay.

One last thought: your college application essay very well could be a scholarship application essay as well. My biggest scholarship came from my college, and I didn't even have to apply for it! They put my application in a pile with the applications of students with similar grades and then chose from there who received the scholarship. My admissions counselor told me that one of the first things they looked for was whether or not I wrote an essay, since essays are optional at this school for your application. The essay may have been the tipping point for me to get the scholarship that enabled me to go there! For this reason, I suggest that you include an essay even if it is optional. It could mean the difference between a scholarship and having to pay the price yourself! Just remember that you want your essay to be you, yet professional and polished.

Ok, this has been a whole lot of information! I hope it has been helpful to you!

Next time: where to find scholarships and basic application help.

You might not like this post...

but you need to get started with scholarship organization in the summer. I know, I know, it isn't exactly fun stuff to do anything related to school when it's 90 degrees outside and the pool is calling. But honestly, you aren't going to want to do it later, so you may as well start now.

Step 1: The Framework

Materials
You will need to have some necessary materials to complete and mail scholarship applications. I'd suggest buying a lot of large manila envelopes, stamps, and some nice writing pens, as well as a binder, folder, and planner (more on that later). If you live in VA, go on the tax-free school supply weekend, August 6-8, 2010. Also, you might consider buying a pack of printer paper if you're going to be printing the applications at home. You will also need transcripts for your applications and your SAT scores. At my high school, the transcript included all classes, AP exam scores, and all SAT/ACT scores. Check with your guidance office as to what is in the envelope (because it should be sealed so you can't get into it). If you are homeschooled, you will need to make a transcript or have one made (and have someone in authority sign it) and have copies of your standardized test scores to include. You may also want to put it in an envelope with a sticker across the seal to show that it has not been tampered.

You may also need some personal information for applications. Many of them ask for your Social Security Number, your parents' last complete income tax returns, and your SAR (Student Aid Report), available on the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) website. I also had a scholarship ask for my birth certificate and driver's license (to verify citizenship and state residency), but most don't need that.
Some of this, especially your SSN, is sensitive private information, so you need to decide if you feel comfortable sharing it with the organization. Not all ask for it, but many do, and some make it optional. If you don't want to share it, just realize that it may jeopardize your chances of getting a scholarship. I'd suggest asking someone who has been around scholarships (guidance counselor, etc) if it is a reputable organization.

About the FAFSA
(HINT: as soon as possible after January 1, fill out your FAFSA! This is very very very very VERY important, not only for scholarships from schools, but also for mailing your SAR to scholarships). You will probably need a parent to fill out the FAFSA, and he/she will need to devote some time to it. He/she will need income tax information to fill it out. Unless you are living off of your own earnings as an independent emancipated child, whoever pays the bills in your house needs to fill this out. If you aren't sure, ask your parent(s)/guardian(s). Check in your area if there is a workshop on filling out the FAFSA.
You'll need to apply for a PIN (and your parent will, too). You can start applying for PINs in the fall, so check the FAFSA website (www.fafsa.gov) for info on that.
Ok, personal story #1: I applied for a scholarship that asked for my SAR from the FAFSA. I had no idea what that was or where to find it. I looked on the FAFSA website and couldn't figure it out, so I just mailed something I thought was the SAR. Alas, it wasn't, and I missed out on a scholarship that several of my classmates were awarded.
So...here's how to find the SAR.
1) Go to fafsa.gov
2) Get a PIN
3) Ask your parent(s)/guardian(s) to fill out and submit your FAFSA form (after January 1 of the year you are entering college).
4) After your FAFSA is approved, you'll get a SAR. It will tell whoever looks at it how much money FAFSA thinks you are able to pay for college and how much you need in aid.
5) If your FAFSA was filled out with estimates from the year before, your parent(s)/guardian(s) will need to make corrections after your official tax returns come in.
Ok, now to actually get the SAR:
6) Go to fafsa.gov and click on "Open your saved FAFSA or correction application).
7) Select the most recent one you filled out from the drop-down menu.
8) Input the necessary information.
9) Click the most recent transaction.
10) Ok, here's why I didn't know where it was. Go to the light blue bar down the left side of the screen and click on where it says "Print Summary." This is your SAR. Then you'll get printing options. It's kind of long, but you need to submit the whole thing.
Always make sure you log out securely. There is a lot of personal information on the FAFSA website, and you want to make sure it is kept safe.


Organization
A planner or calendar with room to write may work for you, or you may want to stay organized with a computer calendar (I made one, but a free one like Google Calendar might also work for you). Really, organization is key to getting scholarships together (especially for the weeks in the spring when there are five due at once!), but you really have to figure out what works for you. For me, it was a Microsoft Word document that I made into a calendar. I organized it like this:

August
1 - application available on www.[insert application website here].com
7 - application [insert name here] must be postmarked by this date SUBMITTED

September
10 - Notification if winner of [insert name here] scholarship

etc...

I am a Type-A, list person, so for me, this calendar was perfect. I could add in and delete information at any time: things I needed to do, items I needed to gather to include in the application, etc. I also found it helpful to highlight items by category. For example, I highlighted the items that would be due soon in yellow, things I needed to get/do (essays, transcripts) in green, dates when I would potentially get a winning notification in purple, and scholarships that I needed to download information from the website in blue. Yeah, it seems complicated, but it worked for me. Make a key if you need to!
At the bottom of my calendar, I kept a running list of scholarships I had turned in, and next to scholarships I'd submitted, I typed a great big red SUBMITTED. Hey, I was excited! :)

As part of your organization, I'd suggest you keep all of your paperwork. Keep copies of submitted applications, info sheets with contact information, award and rejection letters, and any other pertinent information. You can use this to follow up on scholarships you never heard about (and trust me, there will be many. For some reason, it is not considered common courtesy to inform applicants who were not selected that they did not win.) Some scholarships will say that they will only inform the winners, and some will post winners on their websites, but it never hurts to send an email or make a phone call just to check.

Wow, this is a really long post, so I'll stop now. Next up: resumes and essays.

The Daunting Task...Beginning

February of my junior year, I suddenly began to freak out. How on earth was I going to pay for college?

Ok, so maybe most juniors in high school aren't too worried about it. They expect their parents to pay for it, or just figure they'll have loans like everyone else. But I was raised in a family that doesn't typically have debt, and with an older brother also in college, I knew college was going to be expensive and my parents didn't have the money for both of us to go.

I've always been self-motivated, and I worked hard in school, trying to earn money for college. But, even as people said, "The money's out there; all you have to do is look for it," I was unsure.

So the summer before the beginning of my senior year, I took two days and sat at the computer, determined to organize this massive tangle of scholarships and deadlines and essays. I created my own calendar, created a color-coding system, and entered every scholarship for which I was eligible to apply into the calendar. Throughout the year, I updated the calendar, adding new scholarships and marking off those which I had submitted. I kept track of what I needed to do and what I had done and somehow managed to survive the year.

I felt at times that I was in a war for scholarships. There were all these great kids out there who had done awesome things and were going to win all these scholarships, so why should I bother? Still, I continued on, and I'm so glad I did! I applied for over thirty scholarships and was awarded eight, paying for nearly all of my freshman year at a private (and expensive) college that I love.

During the year, as I grumbled at scholarships that had annoying qualifications and confusing requirements, I declared, "I could write a book on scholarships!" Well, a book isn't exactly in reach, but I figure a blog will do the trick. I know several of my friends would love my help, and I'd love to help them.

So, this is both my daunting task and yours. Mine, because I'm committing to writing a blog and trying to convey what I've learned in the past year. Yours, because you are starting the journey I just ended. Well, kind of ended: I will still be looking for scholarships for my sophomore year of college!

Feel free to post comments and questions, and I'll do my best to get back to you!