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The Application: Resumé

Wow. Has been such a long time since I’ve revisited this topic.

Well, first off, I’d like to say that I’m still very much looking for other college students (at any grade level, really) to blog here about their own experiences and dispense advice. As a one-man-band (much like it’s always been), the viewpoint I’m sharing is rather limited, and I don’t think this will ever be comprehensive unless it expands outside of the UC Berkeley, high-school A-student point-of-view. But we’ll see.

In the last piece (awhile back), I talked about finding the right school for you. That, for everyone, is step 1 in the college admissions process, and should long ago have been decided. Assuming you know what you want to study, and where you want to go to study it, the next step is the actual applications process, which consists of three major parts:

The Resume:
-High School transcript
-Standardized Test Scores
-Extracurricular activities
Personal Essay(s)
Teacher Recommendations (for most private universities)

I intended to cover this topic long before the application even became available, but I’ve been sidetracked for much of the past month+. I should be covering this and a lot of other topics shortly, but I’ve decided that it’s probably better to go ahead and open up feedback and questions – I’ll open up a forum shortly for students to post questions and discuss the application process.

Let’s start with “The Resume”:

The Resume is essentially a summation of your entire high school career. Here you’ll list your grades and scores, and activities of the past four years which have defined you. For your high school transcript, there’s really not much you can do: it’s what classes you’ve taken and grades you’ve achieved, all the way up to the first semester of your senior year (I might write a piece later on for future readers (non-seniors) who might be pondering what classes to take, but that’ll be later and *hopefully* with some varying viewpoints from other students, teachers, and college admissions staff).

The second part of your resume consists of your scores: SATs, ACTs, APs, and IBs. Your Advanced Placement exams and International Bachelaureate scores, like your high school transcript, is pretty much set in stone. What is variable, and what you still have opportunity to change, are your scores for the SAT and ACT standardized tests. While you should have most or all of your tests done, and scores reported by the time you send in your college application, most all schools extend their deadline up through the winter for students to take or retake the standardized exams, and send them in later. The UC application, for example, is due November 30^th, 2006, but students are allowed to take and submit scores from as late as the December 2^nd, 2006 SAT or the December 9^th, 2006 ACT.

In some cases, you don’t need any exams at all – the UC system was set to drop the SAT entirely from its admissions process a few years ago, and I believe that it is “optional” for the CSU system. This is mostly doublespeak on the part of colleges: “No, we don’t force applicants to conform to the college board system and judge our students based on trivial test scores, but if you do include exam scores they will be assessed as a significant part of your application.” The bottom line: submit a standardized test score (both the SAT and ACT are widely and equally accepted among almost all colleges) even if the application doesn’t require you to; not doing so will almost always hurt your chances.

Which exams should you take? Those colleges which require exams will require at least the SAT Reasoning Test (the SAT I) or the ACT Assessment plus Writing. For students going the SAT route, some universities (generally the ones with more competition) will also require that applicants submit scores from SAT subject tests (the SAT II’s). These requirements will be spelled out in the application. In general, the SAT subject tests you list should follow along the general lines of the major you apply for, meaning Math II and a science exam (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) for “techie” majors and the literature and history exams for “fuzzy” majors, although this certainly isn’t a requirement. My suggestion is to simply take what you’re most confident in – the tests as a whole generally aren’t the biggest part of the application, and choosing to submit that U.S. History SATII rather than the Physics SAT certainly isn’t going to be the deciding factor in your application. As this will inevitably come up – no, it is redundant and unnecessary to take both the SAT and ACT tests.

Most students will ask the question – should I retake my exams? Under the gravity and anxiety of college admissions, most students never feel secure enough that their scores are “good enough” to get them into the college they want to – that’s the kind of fear that the College Board and Kaplan and the Princeton Review feed on. My answer to that question is: unless your scores are pitifully bad (I would say at or below the minimum requirements to get accepted at all), there’s no reason to worry yourself over the SAT/ACT. Students in their senior year already have am immense amount to worry about – and weekly Kaplan review courses, and the pressure that “now, I have to get the test right this time” don’t need to add to that. From my experience – observing the admissions results of students in my senior class, the range of students here in UC Berkeley, and my own personal application, the standardized test results is probably the most insignificant portion of your exam – a poor or rushed personal essay or declining first-semester grades will tank your application much faster than a low test score will. And besides, anxiety and test prep isn’t the best way to blow the first half of your last year in high school.

As a last note, make sure that your scores are sent to the universities. I’m only familiar with the SAT, although I believe the ACT process is more or less the same – when registering to take the tests, you have an option to select colleges for your scores to be sent out to – take this opportunity to send your scores to the colleges you’re intending to apply to, as otherwise you’ll simply have to resend scores later on (at a fee that the SAT’s CollegeBoard or the ACT’s ACT, Inc.)

Extracurriculars:

Probably one of the most prominent urgings you hear in high school is to “Don’t just focus on academics, you have to go out and do a lot of extracurriculars too.” A lot of college applicants may be surprised to find, then, that once they finally get their hands on the application, they expect you to only list five extracurricular activities, and in the end there’s space for all of two or three lines for each one. But I was Recycling Club President and editor for the newspaper and I’m a lifetime CSF member and I was treasurer for the ASB AND president of the Class of 2007 and on the prom committee all at the same time! And I’ve been volunteering during all of my summers at Park ‘n Rec and I’m on the volleyball team too! How can I possibly pick only five of those and sum my entire high school career into only a couple of lines? The answer is simply, that there isn’t as much to write about as you think – many students will struggle to come up with five (you don’t need to stretch to fill all five, by the way), and even among those who can list 5 extracurriculars, not all five of them will be worth writing more than a couple of lines about – most all students may have one or two activities which they’ve heavily invested themselves in, and the rest are simply “X club: member”, essentially minor and non-notable. This is something non-high school seniors should keep in mind; don’t fall into the trap of joining some club or participating in some activity solely because it will “look good on your transcript or college application” – you’ll waste your time doing something you’re not interested in, and unless you take on a major role, it will hardly be notable on your college application.

So what to actually do: List what you’ve done, and if you happen to have more than five, choose the five that are most important to you, that you feel best exemplify the work you’ve done in high school. For each one, simply list your role(s) and the general activities behind the extracurricular – don’t worry about getting in-depth, because you’ll have your personal essay to tell the whole story behind your work in Extracurricular X.

Here are some samples of the five extracurriculars I listed, although these aren’t necessarily good examples or ones that you should copy (I’ll see if anybody else has their college apps saved from previous years):

Journalism Club

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of independent student newspaper. Work to write articles, copy-edit, design layout, and administrative duties as editor (assisting students with story ideas, articles)

Flask Server
Built, set up student web server running off school LAN. Develop content for school-related activities, mostly clubs and student organizations, as well as website projects. Sitemaster for all content.

Journalism Instructor
Volunteered as Journalism Instructor for students at former middle school (Lipman Middle School), after original journalism program was cancelled. Worked with students to write articles, do layout, publish paper.

Associated Press Conference (Embed Reader)
Attended Associated Press Managing Editors Conference in San Jose. Nominated by San Francisco Chronicle to attend. Served as embedded reader, participant during seminars and as panelist for readers' perspectives.

WICSA Model United Nations Debate Club
Founded Model United Nations debate club. Discuss/debate issues, but in form of legislation put up to vote. Founder, and principal moderator/secretary-general.

Some things to note:

• I did not write in complete sentences – you don’t need to, and it’s more efficient this way
• My extracurriculars don’t pertain to my major: I ended up applying as either an Electrical Engineering, Aeronautical Engineering, or Computer Science major to most of the schools I applied to. Notice that I only have one “technical” extracurricular listed – the rest are more related to English or social studies. If I wanted, I could have listed things like Math Club or Astronomy Club that pertained to my major, but I chose these because they exemplified leadership roles, which at the high school level is a rarer and more outstanding quality than competence in a particular field of study (which colleges will be able to tell from your grades anyway).

That should be it for “The Resume”. I’ll touch on personal essays and teacher recommendations next. If you’ve got any feedback or questions, feel free to comment them here or send them to nathanyan@berkeley.edu.