Many students feel reluctant to write or talk about themselves for fear of being seen as a show-off. While the instinct for not coming across as a braggart is “right on,” students need to have a means for conveying how they spend their time in and out of school. An activities resume is an excellent tool for doing that.

DEFINITION OF AN ACTIVITIES RESUME
A cornerstone of the adMISSION POSSIBLE® process, an activities resume is a 1-4 page written picture of your academic, extracurricular, sports, and other involvements that focuses on high school years, but also ties in long-term interests and activities that may go back to when you were a young child.

THE BOTTOM LINE
After test scores and grades, admissions officers look for how and where you spend time, including the quality, depth and length of involvement. Developing an activities resume is not only a way to provide colleges with information about who you are, but it is also a way to learn about yourself.

As students gather information about involvements they have engaged in over the years, they often gain a new perspective for how interesting and “one-of-a-kind” they are. Seeing everything you have done written down is altogether different from having faint memories of past activities (or no memory of them at all). As you look over your resume, themes and patterns of interests often pop out. Sometimes you realize that what you are doing now is connected to something you did when you were four years old. These insights are useful for you to have and admissions people to know.

An activities resume is one of adMISSION POSSIBLE’s secret weapons, because of its power to help others “get” who you are. Few students take the trouble to put an activities resume, let alone do it very well.

FRESHMAN YEAR TIMELINE FOR PUTTING TOGETHER AN ACTIVITIES RESUME

9th grade is not too early to begin noting down all of your various activities, awards, sports, and other involvements, regardless of how important or unimportant they may seem. You are likely to forget some (or a lot) of what you do if you don’t write it down. Keep a record of your activities and awards, how much time they took, and note any leadership, honors and special accomplishments involved. After all, what starts out as insignificant in your freshman year may become significant in your junior or senior years. Colleges are very impressed with students who choose an activity, stay with and develop it over a period of years.

Freshman year is a good time to taste a variety of involvements to see what interests you. The best criterion for deciding whether or not to continue with something is whether you really like doing it.