How to write a college freshman resume

Why a freshman needs a resume at all

It is tempting to think a resume can wait until junior year, when internships get serious. But first-year students get asked for one surprisingly often. Campus jobs, work-study positions, research programs for first- and second-year students, scholarship applications, selective student organizations, summer jobs, volunteer programs and early internship or externship programs may all ask you to upload a resume.

A freshman resume has a different job from a senior's. It is not trying to prove you can do a professional role on day one. It is showing that you are reliable, curious and already taking your college years seriously. A clean one-page resume does that before anyone reads a word, and the content fills in the details.

There is a second reason to start now. A resume is much easier to maintain than to build from scratch. If you create a solid version in your first semester and update it every few months, you will never face the junior-year panic of trying to remember what you did two years ago. You will also notice gaps early, when you still have time to fill them with a campus job, a club role or a summer position.

This guide covers the transition from a high school resume to a college one: what to keep, what to drop and when, what counts as experience in your first year, and how campus jobs, summer jobs and early programs fit on the page.

High school accomplishments on a college resume: what stays and what goes

This is the question most freshmen get stuck on. You probably have a high school resume, or at least a college application activities list, full of things you worked hard for. Do they still belong?

The short answer: some of them, for now. Your first-year resume is a bridge between high school and college, and it is normal for it to lean on high school while you build new entries. The question to ask about each item is whether it still tells an employer something useful.

Usually keep during freshman year:

• Significant leadership roles, such as student body president, team captain, editor of the school paper or founder of a club
• Jobs, including part-time work at a restaurant, store, camp or family business
• Major awards, such as a National Merit recognition, a state-level competition result or an Eagle Scout or Girl Scout Gold Award
• Substantial projects or research, like a science fair project that advanced to regionals or a self-taught coding project
• Long-term volunteer commitments with real responsibility

Usually drop now:

• Your high school GPA and class rank, once you have a college GPA
• SAT or ACT scores, unless a specific application asks for them
• Clubs you only joined, honor roll mentions and minor participation awards
• Middle school anything

When high school leaves the page entirely: As you add college entries over your first and second years, high school items should drop off one at a time, starting with the weakest. By junior year, most students have no high school entries left, apart from perhaps a job or an exceptional achievement that still fits the role. A good test: if a college entry and a high school entry compete for the same space, the college entry wins unless the high school one is clearly more relevant to the job.

When you do keep a high school item, label it clearly with the school name and dates so nobody mistakes it for a college activity. You can keep your high school name in the Education section during freshman year, below your college, and remove it once you have a full year of college behind you.

What counts as experience in your first year

Freshmen often underestimate what they can list. Experience on a student resume is anything where you took on responsibility, produced something or learned a skill an employer would care about. In your first year, that includes:

• Jobs of any kind, from high school or college, paid hourly or by the gig
• Campus jobs, including work-study positions (more on these below)
• Student organizations you have joined and taken on any role in, even a small one like social media volunteer or event helper
• Class projects that resemble real work: a lab report you designed the experiment for, a group presentation to an outside client, a business plan, a coding assignment you extended on your own
• Volunteer work at school or at home
• Athletics, both varsity and club teams, which show time management and commitment
• Summer programs, like pre-college programs, bridge programs or academic camps

If you are starting with almost no entries of any kind, the resume with no experience guide goes deeper on building a page out of activities, coursework and side gigs.

The fastest way to add substance in your first semester is to join one or two organizations connected to what you want to study, and volunteer for a specific task. "Member, Environmental Club" is a line. "Helped plan the fall campus cleanup, recruiting 25 volunteers through the club's Instagram account" is evidence.

Campus jobs: the most underrated line on a freshman resume

A campus job is one of the most valuable things a first-year student can put on a resume, and many students undersell it. Working at the dining hall, library, rec center, mailroom, admissions office, IT help desk or a department front desk shows an employer exactly what they want to know about a young candidate: that you can show up on schedule, follow procedures, deal with the public and balance work with classes.

If you qualify for Federal Work-Study as part of your financial aid, ask your financial aid or student employment office how to find eligible positions. Many campus jobs are open to students without work-study too.

The trick is to describe a campus job by what you were trusted to do, not just where you stood:

• Weak: "Worked at the dining hall."

• Strong: "Prepared and served meals for 300+ students per shift, followed food safety procedures and was trusted to close the station after two months."

• Weak: "Front desk at the rec center."

• Strong: "Checked in students and guests, handled equipment rentals and resolved membership questions for a facility open 90 hours a week; trained 2 new hires during spring semester."

• Weak: "IT help desk."

• Strong: "Answered walk-in and phone requests for password resets, Wi-Fi connections and printer issues, logging each ticket in the help desk system."

Campus jobs also build relationships. A supervisor who has watched you work for a semester can be a strong reference for your first internship.

Summer jobs, externships and first internships

The summer after freshman year is a good time to add a new line to your resume, and it does not have to be a formal internship. Here are the options that commonly work for first-year students:

Summer jobs. Lifeguarding, camp counselor, retail, restaurant work, landscaping, tutoring, working in a family business. These are real jobs, and they build the reliability record employers look for. A summer as a camp counselor responsible for a cabin of ten-year-olds says a lot about responsibility and judgment.

Early internship programs. Some larger companies and organizations run programs aimed specifically at first- and second-year college students, often with names that include words like "explore," "discovery," "early career" or "sophomore." They are designed for students with little experience, so a well-organized freshman resume is exactly what they expect. Look for them on Handshake and on company career pages, and apply in the fall, since many of these programs recruit on the same early timeline as regular internships.

Externships and job shadowing. An externship is a short, often unpaid experience, sometimes only a few days or a week, where you shadow professionals in a field. Many colleges arrange these through alumni networks during winter or spring break. They count as experience: list them with the organization, dates and what you observed or contributed.

Research. Some professors take first-year students as lab volunteers or assistants, and some universities run research programs for freshmen. Ask your professors in office hours, and check your school's undergraduate research office.

Local and small-organization internships. A local nonprofit, a city office, a small business or a startup may take a freshman intern for a summer, especially if you reach out directly with a resume and a short, specific email.

When you are ready to go after a more competitive internship, the internship resume guide covers recruiting timelines, tailoring and projects in depth.

The Education section for a first-year student

Education goes at the top of a freshman resume. Include:

• Your college name and city, state
• Degree and major, or "Undeclared" or "Intended Major: Biology" if you have not declared yet
• Expected graduation month and year, such as "Expected May 2029"
• College GPA, once you have one and it helps you (a common rule of thumb is 3.0 or above)
• Honors, like Dean's List or a merit scholarship
• A few relevant courses, once you have taken them

In your first semester, you will not have a college GPA. That is fine; leave the line out. Some students keep their high school GPA during the first semester if it was strong, labeled with the high school name. Once your first college grades come in, replace it.

Should you list your high school? During freshman year, you can list it below your college if it adds something, for example a strong GPA, a specialized program or a well-known magnet school. Many students simply leave it off; either choice is reasonable. By sophomore year, remove it.

Example: a first-year student's resume

Picture a freshman environmental science major applying for a campus job as a student assistant in the university's sustainability office. Her high school resume listed nine activities, her SAT score and her honor roll status. She has one semester of college, a dining hall job and a new club.

Her updated resume opens with a two-line summary naming the role and her interest. Education lists her college, intended major, expected graduation and fall semester GPA, with her high school GPA gone. Experience leads with the dining hall job, rewritten to show food waste sorting procedures she follows, followed by her high school summer job at a garden center. Leadership and Activities shows her role helping plan a campus cleanup with the environmental club, and keeps one high school entry: founding her school's recycling program, which is directly relevant. The SAT score, honor roll and six minor clubs are gone.

The result is shorter than her old high school resume and much stronger. The before-and-after example on this page shows the change in resume form.

Keep it current every semester

A freshman resume is a living document. Put a reminder in your calendar for the end of every semester and every summer to update it: add new roles, rewrite bullets with any new results, swap in your new GPA, and remove one high school item when a college item can replace it.

Before you send it anywhere, run it through the free ATS resume checker with the posting pasted in. It flags formatting, contact and section problems and shows which requirements from the posting your resume covers. Campus job applications often go through the same online systems as professional jobs, so a clean, single-column file matters even for a library position. The ATS friendly resume guide explains the format.

If you would like help turning your high school and first-semester activities into a college-ready resume, StudentCV can build it with you. Upload an old resume or type in what you have done, paste the posting for the campus job, summer job or program, and the AI rewrites and organizes it for that role using only what you tell it. You can edit the whole resume for free before deciding to pay, then download it as a PDF or Word file.

A strong freshman resume will not get you every opportunity you apply for, but it makes your first applications look prepared, and it gives you a solid base to build on for the next three years.