Résumé Advice

Comments

• 3 Likes

  LOWERCASE EVERYTHING Member ⭐

  December 2020 edited December 2020 1952 karma

  i struggled with the same issue, so i'll share what i decided to do, although i think you should carefully consider other advices that you get before you make a decision.

  the general tip i got from multiples sources is that you shouldn't list any high activities on your résumé. here's the advice that 7sage gives:
  "don’t include anything you did in high school."
  "i don’t care how many prizes you won your senior year—noting high school accomplishments makes you look immature."
  "adding accomplishments from high school will make you look slightly pathetic."
  https://7sage.com/admissions/lesson/the-education-section/?ss_completed_lesson=16759
  https://7sage.com/admissions/lesson/what-to-cut/?ss_completed_lesson=16753
  i gotta be honest: i've had doubts that the adcom would do math for every résumé to figure out if an activity was from high school or not.
  but when these schools explicitly told me not to include my high school activities, i became even more compelled not to include them.
  these schools had a choice of what to include on their app instructions, and if they explicitly said not to include high school activities, i figured that these schools genuinely cared about this.
  i did not want to take my chances, and to these schools, i thought that at best, i'd be thought of as someone who lacks attention to detail; at worst, i'd be thought of as someone who does not listen to and follow directions.
  these potential consequences seemed to outweigh the potential benefits (if any) i would get from listing a few more legal experience on my résumé.
  what i ended up doing was adding a line or two in one of my supplemental essays to communicate my involvement in the legal field from early on and how this partly contributed to the development of my decision on law school.

  good luck!
• 2 Likes

  lemonadesugar97 Member

  December 2020 edited December 2020 20 karma

  I have spoken to admission counselors and they have said no to the high school activities. If BU said no highschool, I would listen to them. It's not a good look to ignore their requests.
• 2 Likes

  arnisya97 Alum Member

  December 2020 139 karma

  Ok thank you both @lemonadesugar97 @"LOWERCASE EVERYTHING" .
  It stings, but I'll do the mature thing and leave out HS stuff.
• 1 Like

  canihazJD Alum Member Sage ⭐

  December 2020 8491 karma

  @arnisya97 thats the right call. View it the way your app reader will (especially in light of explicit instructions). If you want to get introspective about it, you likely feel compelled to include these things because of how you value them. You have no reason to think adcoms will assign the same value, in fact there are several reasons to believe they won't.

  That said, if there is something you feel is truly compelling, you can always work it into your PS or an optional essay... and if these things don't warrant that, then maybe leaving them off the resume isn't such a big deal anyway.

  If you can present it as plain employment, I do think the internship could be relevant, but I wouldn't try it unless you aren't addressing "why law" directly and are trying to show it through your resume as a whole.