College Resume, help needed....

[Kelli in TN]

My daughter and I are working on her resume for a university scholars program competition.

How should we format this? What should be included? What is better left off? The application gives no guidelines at all.

[Jane in NC]

No help with the question at hand, but I wanted to welcome you back to the boards. Nice to see your beautiful smile.

Jane

[Kelli in TN]

"List the high schools you attended"

Okay, for this part of the resume I want her to say more than "homeschooled" or "home educated" or "homeskooled" or "Dang, my momma done taught me good".

I want to say that we loosely followed a classical approach, but I don't want to OVERstate this since we were Latin and logic flunkies! But her literature was rich and wonderful and her history was rich and wonderful and I just want these dept heads to know that this homeschooler is not coming from a background of Lifepacs, you know?

And thanks Jane, I appreciate the welcome.

[Michelle in AL]

Hi Kelli, how about saying you took a Great Books approach?

[Mama Bear]

I like the "Great Books" idea. How about something like "Educated at home following the classical model, with an emphasis on Great Books study."

[Mama Lynx]

OK, this may just be stupid, because I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

If they just want a list of high schools in that section ... could you just give your homeschool a name that reflects what you want to convey? (yourtown) Great Books Academy? My Momma Done Taught Me Great Books? ;-)

[*anj*]

I think that a writing sample would be a good idea. Also, you would want to include any extra curricular and or volunteer work that she's done. I'm just trying to remember what kinds of things we included when I was her age. I'm not sure how much things have changed, and my kids aren't there yet. ;)

[Kelli in TN]

Well, we have the volunteer and such listed already. But we need to say something about her high school and I just want to help her word it so she stands out. I want to the dept heads to be looking forward to putting her in front of the firing squad, er, interview process. I want them to say to one another "hey, I am looking forward to meeting this one" or something like that.

I DON'T want them to say, "Oh. Not another one of those homeskulers."

[Mama Bear]

stuff I have to say when I'm writing up monthly reports for my kidlets. The teacher who helps with this suggests that I look back at the goals i have written for them, the scope and sequence, if you will, and then mention particular scores or progress made within those goals.

For you, when you say that you want her to stand out, think about the goals she has in her major (or major area of interest), the details which would bring her to the attention fo said dept heads, and use some catch phrases particular tho the area of interest. If it's Humanities or Liberal Arts, the mention of Classical Ed should have an impact, if Lit or History, Great Books mention should make 'em snap to.

What's she interested in?

[Kelli in TN]

What's she interested in?

Political Science, followed up by law school most likely. Or grad school. Or the Peace Corps. But definitely political science for her B.A. degree.

[Mama Bear]

Then she should rethink the great books thing. Having a good grounding in history/lit puts one in an excellent position to take on poli sci (JMO, but I think it's sound). Can you pull up anything from the dept(s) where she's looking to go? If so, you might find phrases to "respond to" from their sites.

[Gwen in VA]

When my dd was pautting together a resume for the first time (fall of freshman year), we goggled "college resume" and "student resume" and were amazed at all the examples we found.

We then promptly discarded all the examples and did our own thing, but at least we knew what a "normal" one looked like!

[outtamyshell]

It sounds like you want to include a short description of your education philosophy. Why don't you just try writing something like a post here about your education philosophy, goals, focus, etc? Pretend your giving a description to someone who's never been to these boards about what you do at home. Once you have your main ideas together you can put it into a third person, formal description for your homeschool.

I think it's going to be important for each of us to go through this exercise. Every homeschool is so different. We are going to need to explain to those colleges what homeschool means to us.

I would love to see what you end up with. Or one of the steps along the way.