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Mature Student Resume

Jessica DJessica D Member
in Law School Admissions 30 karma

Hello everyone,

I am applying as a mature student. I have extensive experience in my field (21 years). My resume shows a rapid and steady climb to senior leadership positions. I am currently a professor in my field.

I am not sure how to approach the length of my resume submission. I am curious what people here think. I have curated the entries to highlight the most relevant aspects of the jobs I have held. I included provincial registrations related to my field as well as recent professional development initiatives. For the latter I stuck to ones that have relevance to either law or the mandates of the school I am applying to. I did include a summary of qualifications on the first page. That has also been carefully curated to showcase only those items that an admission committee may be interested in. With all that said, my resume is at three pages. I notice that most suggestions for law school resumes are one page. Given my extensive relevant experience I was aiming for two.
Should I try and cut a page? Should I leave it as is since I am in the mature category? What does everyone think?

Thanks!

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Comments

  • LawyeringForLife-1LawyeringForLife-1 Member
    279 karma

    Hi Jess.
    You mention provincial registrations so if you are in Canada and applying to Canadian schools I have no idea whatsoever.
    If you are in the US:
    Not sure what schools you are targeting but the 7Sage admissions primer and Miriam and Kristi's podcast (they are the assistant deans of admissions at Yale and Harvard respectively) have some great tips.

    For the resume, as a non-traditional candidate with a ton of experience the best advice I have seen is to leave only the "biggest hits" on your resume. The app will ask for work experience, so they will have everything there. Focus the resume around the jobs that are most meaningful to you and you want to present yourself with.
    Now depending if you have publications or awards that may be something you want to include as well. With your tenure and accomplishments you may be closer to that 2-page side.
    Another caveat, if you have been mostly working at the same company, you may want to really focus around what you are highlighting for each title. Either way, they say the admissions team will read 2 bullets and may glance at a 3rd, so brevity is key.

    Hope this helps.

  • Jessica DJessica D Member
    30 karma

    @LawyeringForLife said:
    Hi Jess.
    You mention provincial registrations so if you are in Canada and applying to Canadian schools I have no idea whatsoever.
    If you are in the US:
    Not sure what schools you are targeting but the 7Sage admissions primer and Miriam and Kristi's podcast (they are the assistant deans of admissions at Yale and Harvard respectively) have some great tips.

    For the resume, as a non-traditional candidate with a ton of experience the best advice I have seen is to leave only the "biggest hits" on your resume. The app will ask for work experience, so they will have everything there. Focus the resume around the jobs that are most meaningful to you and you want to present yourself with.
    Now depending if you have publications or awards that may be something you want to include as well. With your tenure and accomplishments you may be closer to that 2-page side.
    Another caveat, if you have been mostly working at the same company, you may want to really focus around what you are highlighting for each title. Either way, they say the admissions team will read 2 bullets and may glance at a 3rd, so brevity is key.

    Hope this helps.

    Thank you very much for the feedback.
    I am in Ontario, Canada and applying to a local law school.

  • LEKPK222LEKPK222 Member
    46 karma

    Jessica,
    I am in a similar boat. I just submitted all my apps, and had to tweak my resume to make it more appropriate for law school. I did subscribe to the "greatest hits" thought process, and cut down specific roles and responsibilities to a one sentence or 2-3 bullet point highlight. I also spent significant space on non-profit and association involvement. My resume ended up being a full 2 pages, cut down from what could have been 3. I feel like that was a comfortable length to establish a reasonable history of my past 14 years of adulthood, and hopefully I'll be finding out soon if it worked! :) Good luck!

  • Jessica DJessica D Member
    30 karma

    Thanks for weighing in.
    I spoke with someone at the school yesterday. They said three pages would be fine given how long I've been in my industry. I have cut mine down to that number. I had started with four pages! :joy:
    Best of luck to you as well.

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