How does the résumé work?

This is the first in a series of posts dealing with the résumé section on Apply Texas, the expanded résumé, and how admissions reviewers assess your activities and accomplishments in regards to your choice of major and fit into the university.

The Apply Texas application requires that you list your accomplishments, job experience, volunteer hours, and extracurricular activities. You should complete these sections as thoroughly as possible. The application, however, is imperfect because there is limited space to expand upon the important activities you are involved in outside of the classroom.

UT recommends that you submit an expanded résumé. What colleges recommend, you should probably do (contrasted with “optional” recommendation letters). The expanded résumé is a paper copy of your extracurricular record. Contrasted with a one- or two-page professional résumés, college résumés can and should be as long and thorough as you choose.

Since Apply Texas forces applicants into a finite number of spaces and rigid categories to fit in your accomplishments, you can include additional sections for things like musical talents, links to artwork, research projects, passions and hobbies,  or anything else that an admissions reviewer may find interesting.

The expanded résumé serves as an opportunity to go into details about your activities. Similar to a professional résumé, you should include action verbs to describe your roles, responsibilities, and accomplishments. The format of the expanded résumé is not important; the content is what counts.

The résumé is your opportunity to include anything you are doing outside of the classroom and ought to complement your essays and recommendation letters that you submit. The most effective résumés are those that function and work together with the rest of your application instead of a distinct and separate part.