College Student Resume Sample

These tips are specifically for students, but are useful for anyone lacking in the professional experience department.

1. Pour extra effort into your student resume objective

A career objective (or resume objective) is a three sentence blurb about who you are and why you’re the best candidate for the job. It is one of three commonly used resume introductions, and it’s best suited for the vast majority of college students because it requires no work experience to write. These three sentences can be broken up as follows:

1. An introductory sentence where you state your degree and a strong example of experience that’s relevant to the job. This experience doesn’t need to be from work — school, volunteering or extra-curricular examples are fine here too.

“Diligent university student who has never failed to meet a project deadline during four years at Texas A&M.”

2. A statement where you mention how your strongest skills make you perfect for the specific position you’re trying to land.

“Aiming to leverage my writing, sales skills, and knowledge of product development to land an internship for [TARGET COMPANY]’s marketing team.”

3. A concluding remark which illustrates how the combination of your skills and experiences makes you an asset to the company.

“Ability to critically think and implement ideas will help [TARGET COMPANY] reach more consumers and expand its outreach.”

If you’re still not sure how to make your very own, our killer resume objective guide dives into greater detail.

2. Bulk up your education section

Sometimes it’s a scary prospect filling up space on a resume (especially if you’re a student). The best way to achieve this to create a solid resume education section that highlights your greatest academic and extra-curricular accomplishments.

Under your university’s name, include the following information:

• GPA: If your cumulative GPA is 3.5 or above, put this at the top.
• Relevant completed courses: Any coursework that helps establish yourself as knowledgable in a particular field should be listed here.
• Awards & Honors: If you’ve received any awards or honors that help prove how capable you are, think of one or two and place them in this section.
• Clubs & Organizations: This is also important because it shows that you have interests outside the realm of academics. Employers are looking for well-rounded individuals, so list a couple of the most relevant ones.

Bonus Tip: For a college student, listing your high school achievements isn’t necessary unless you are truly worried about bulking up your resume. If you decide to use high school information, make sure it’s really strong and relevant content.

3. Swap the Professional Experience section for a Major Projects section

Detailing your major school projects is a valuable alternative to describing your professional experience. In our college student resume example, the student is applying for a marketing internship. She was part of one marketing campaign and also participated in a relevant competition, so both were emphasized in their own individual sections.

You can see how she wields these examples as concrete evidence of her marketing ability. Being able to do this in your own field is critical for landing a great internship — see if you can do the same!

A detailed education section is the meat of a college student resume, so make sure you don’t brush over it. Putting in time now will pay dividends.

Alright, are you feeling prepared yet? Our huge assortment of downloadable resume templates is completely free for everyone to use and a great resource to kick off the writing process.

For people who want to get things done quickly and painlessly, we have a resume generator that can help you put together a resume in minutes.