THE QUICK GUIDE

TO ADMISSIONS
RESUMES

An Accepted Admissions Guide

2016 Accepted www.accepted.com
 The Quick Guide to Admissions Resumes

Introduction

Often, your resume will be the first component of your application that the admissions
committee readers review. They look at it as a sort of snapshot a quick introduction to
and overview of your accomplishments and strengths, a small window into who you are
and how you may fit into their program.

The resume plays a major role in contributing to the adcoms first impression of your
candidacy, and yet, applicants rarely give their resumes the attention they deserve!

In this guide, we emphasize the importance of the application resume, and then provide
you with the tips and tools needed to optimize your resumes in ways that will help you
get noticedand then accepted. We address critical topics such as what to include in
your resume, how to format your resume, and how to make it more readable. Most
importantly, well teach you how to ensure that your resume serves as an instrumental
vehicle in highlighting the impressive experiences you have had and displaying those
qualifications that make you who you are an ideal candidate for your target graduate
school program.

Enjoy The Quick Guide to Admissions Resume!

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Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 2
What is Accepted? ............................................................................................................................ 4
Why Our Clients Love Us ................................................................................................................ 5
How to Write a Resume that is Readable, Impactful, andUnique ................................................... 6
8 Tips for Better Resumes ................................................................................................................ 8
9 Dos And Donts For Your Resume ............................................................................................ 10
Putting it All Together.................................................................................................................... 13
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................... 14

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What is Accepted?

Accepted is the premier admissions consultancy that offers:

1-on-1 consulting for business school, medical school, law school, graduate school, and
college applicants
Expert editing of all application components (essays, resumes, letters of recommendation,
waitlist letters, and more)
Interview prep
Free resources guides, webinars, and a podcast
Sample essays
Our interactive blog where you can get the latest admissions news, solid advice, and
answers to your questions

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Why Our Clients Love Us

No matter where you live and no matter where you're applying, our expert admissions consultants
are ready to listen, mentor, and guide you as you prepare an outstanding application that will get
you accepted. You'll love us because you'll see from the first phone call or email that we care
about you and support you as you strive to achieve your goals and dreams.

But you don't need to take our word for it. See what some of our clients have to say
about Accepted

As you are aware, we have been working together on my MBA applications. Just to jog
your mind, you helped me apply to 7 schools in the USA including Haas, Kellogg and
Fuqua. I was invited to interview with every school that I applied to despite my low
GMAT of only 660. Now the results have started coming out and so far I have been
admitted to Tuck and Fuqua. There is no way I would have been successful without your
invaluable edits and mock interviews. I owe this success to you Jennifer.

Oh and btw, the resume you did for me has earned me an interview with McKinsey.

"Guess what? YES... I got accepted!!! I have only just received NYU's accepting letter in
the mail, isn't this just brilliant? I really have to thank you for helping me with my essay.
Without your help, I don't think this could be happening. ...Thanks for all the patience,
efforts and time you have spent on my essay, thanks for helping me to achieve this goal...
Please share this good news with Ms. Abraham, I have to thank her for helping me with
one of my recommendation letters too. Again... Thank you thank you thank you!"

"Thank you again for all of your support and advice throughout this process. I wouldn't
even think about trying this "gamble" without having the confidence of 5 amazing
essays and an outstanding resume on my application to support me. The quality of
those documents would not have been even remotely possible without your help. I can
only describe your contributions to my application with one word...stellar."

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How to Write a Resume that is Readable, Impactful, and Unique

Now that you know what elements should and should not be included in your resume, its time to
turn to how to make your resume read well and look good.

Here are some important rules for formatting your application resume;

o There should be no more than four bullet points beneath each position.
o Each bullet point should ideally be no more than two lines long.
o To ease the readers eye strain, the font should not be smaller than 10 pt.
o Margins should be as close to one inch all around as possible, without going less
than 0.7 inches.
o Use design elements to enhance your resume. The skillful use of understated
design elements can result in an eye-catching resume that projects a sophisticated,
successful image. These elements can be uncomplicated, such as using white space
generously or replacing the traditional round bullet with the less common
diamond- and arrow-shaped bullet. Or they can be more complex, such as using
expanded text (kerning) to highlight a key term or enclosing the professional
profile section of your resume in a shaded box. Naturally, applicants for positions
in management or traditional industries will want to stick with conservative
typefaces and avoid "flashy" visual elements.

o Eliminate extra lines. Keep your address and contact information on one line if
possible, avoid listing your job titles and company names for each position on two
separate lines, and trim the writing of each bullet point to keep it to a maximum of
two lines.

o Include ample white space. Make margins no less than around 0.8 inches and
instead of pressing the Enter key twice between positions or sections, use MS
Words Format, Paragraph, Spacing Before box to add a bit of white space
between lines and sections more compactly.

With these rules in mind, how should applicants to the top programs focus the resume on their
most relevant and compelling experiences? Limit the number of bullet points describing your
early entry-level roles and instead expand the space dedicated to those in which you made the
most impact.

For instance, if you were promoted from an entry-level programming position with your
company, then you dont even need to dedicate a separate line to describe that first role. Instead,
you can simply impress the reader by describing the fast pace of promotion in a line of the job
description, like this:

Team Lead, IT Consulting Company 2010-Present

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Twice promoted from Analyst (2010-2011) to Senior Analyst (2011) and then Team Lead
in record 12 months, a full four times faster than the average rate of promotion.

What if one position has allowed you significant leadership opportunities and impact? Or what if
you have been in your current role for several years? How can you detail all that you have
accomplished in just four bullet points? The trick is to break that down into sections, like this for
example:

Private Equity Associate, PE Firm 2011-Present

Lines of job description here

Leadership Accomplishments Include:

First point
Second point
Third point
Fourth point

Financial Impacts Include:

First point
Second point
Third point
Fourth point

Keep in mind that the majority if not all of those bullet points should include quantifiable
impact that you had on the organization. Breaking up a bulk of text with numbers and section
headings makes the entire document more compelling.

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8 Tips for Better Resumes

Looking for solid tips for the actual writing of your resume? What should you include? What
should you leave out? What sort of tone should you use? What do you need to know? The
following eight tips will guide you towards creating an impressive, persuasive, accurate resume:

1. Know your target programs mission.

The best way to convince the admissions board to offer you a spot in their next class is to
understand the goals and mission of their program. Before starting your resume, you should learn
as much as possible about what sorts of candidates your program seeks. Then, customize your
resume to reflect the aspects of your background that are most relevant to the program you are
applying to.

2. Know yourself professionally your skills and your accomplishments.

What skills are you particularly good at? What accomplishments are you proudest of? What have
you achieved that gained you the most recognition? Interview yourself and inventory your
previous jobs, the skills you acquired, and your "greatest hits" as a professional the times when
you contributed to your organization the most. Look through your formal performance reviews
for glowing appraisals, scan your work files for successes you may have forgotten about, or keep
a personal career folder where you keep track of new skills youve learned or the comments of
happy customers.

Additional questions to consider: Do you fill a role traditionally filled by someone much older
than you? Have you become one of only a few to transition to a coveted department or role?
Have you earned awards for your work that far surpass the average rate of recognition? You can
list these types of data points in a Highlights section at the top of your document.

3. Stand out personally.

Fight negative stereotypes about your profession to show that you are exceptional. If you are an
accountant, admissions committees tend to assume you are risk averse, so you need to add
material that shows some of the bigger risks youve taken: entrepreneurial efforts, motorcycle
racing, etc. If youre a finance type, you might be perceived as conceited or aloof, so you should
be sure to include evidence of your social skills and humility: community service efforts,
mentoring, etc.

4. Be concrete, specific, quantitative.

Dont say "Developed e-commerce plan that was selected for implementation" when you mean
"Designed $5 million e-commerce strategy that increased revenues by 12% and attracted six new
clients." If you work for a private company and cant disclose revenue figures, refer to
percentage increases or improvements or cite the improved industry ranking of the
organizations product or performance as a result of your contribution. Think of numbers and
other hard details as the proof that you can deliver.

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5. Know how far back to go.

You need to know how far back in time to detail in this document. As a general rule, if you
are applying to graduate school and have at least two years of work experience, your high
school activities should not be included in your resume. However, there are exceptions to this
rule. For example, if you won a prestigious national award in high school, you may certainly
consider including this important recognition.

6. Know your negatives.

The vast majority of us have screwed up once or twice in our careers: been downsized, locked
in a dead-end job, or just failed to work to our full potential for a time. You cant lie about these
career plateaus (see Tip #7) but you can present them in the best possible light so you have the
chance to explain them fully if they come up during the interview. It all starts with your resume.
With the right strategy you can deal with everything from typecasting and job- hopping to
limited experience and unemployment.

7. Dont lie.

Making up degrees, accomplishments, and other personal and professional facts is always a bad
idea. Dont do it its unethical and potentially self-destructive. Adcoms wont hesitate to show
students to the door when they learn their resume is more fiction than fact. But even less brazen
forms of dishonesty should stay far from your resume. For example, if you were one of six
members of a team of managers with equal rank and responsibility, dont say you "Served as
lead of six-member management team.

8. Be strategically creative.

No, we dont mean using DayGlo ink or faux marble resume paper. We do mean bringing to the
preparation of your resume the same capacity for thinking outside the box that you bring to your
career. For example, if the traditional chronological resume will bury your best material near the
bottom, consider using a "functional" resume format or even a combination of the chronological
and the functional. Similarly, if you paid for your entire college education, add a line mentioning
this in your resumes education section. Want to let the adcom know that youre from a minority
group without committing the no-no of adding a personal data section? Add a memberships
section to your resume and include the name of community organizations (for example, "South
Asian Business Alliance of Ohio") you belong to so adcom readers know what groups you
identify with.

If youre still not sure how to develop a comprehensive profile or youre too busy achieving to
do damage control on a negative, contact an Accepted consultant. Let professionals highlight
your professionalism. Because youre outstanding shouldnt your resume be?

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9 Dos And Donts For Your Resume

Your resume is usually the first opportunity admissions readers have to get to know you, your
experience, and your skills. Because of the number of other application components they need to
review (both yours and those belonging to the thousands of other applicants), most adcom readers
will only give your resume a quick fifteen-second glance before moving on to the next thing on
their checklist. Not only do you have to make a great first impression you have to do it fast!

Fortunately, there are many ways to craft an application resume that strategically highlights your
skills and makes you and your qualifications stand out from the crowd. The following Dos and
Donts will help you develop a dynamic, powerful resume that will enable you to sail through the
adcoms initial fifteen-second screening process and earn your outstanding qualifications the
closer look they deserve.

The Dos:

1. Place your strongest material in the two-inch visual space that begins about 2 5/8 inches
from the top of your resume. Make sure you include your most impressive, impactful
achievements and qualifications in this primetime space. Its where the readers eyes will focus
first.

2. Use a professional profile or qualifications section in your resumes primetime space to

give the adcom reader a quick but concrete capsule of your achievements and skills. Write this
section when the rest of your resume is complete and youve already decided what your strongest
qualifications are.

3. Give the most weight to your most recent professional position. The section of the resume
for your most recent position should contain more bulleted accomplishments than your previous
positions. For each position, rank the accomplishments in order of decreasing relevance to the
employer you are targeting.

4. Quantify your impact on the organizations you have worked for. If you reduced expenses,
say by how much or by what percentage. If you supervised a project, say how many were on your
team. Always ask yourself how you helped the organization, and insert the numbers that
demonstrate that impact.

5. Pay as much attention to your resumes design as you do to its content. Use bullets or other
appropriate symbols, insert rules (horizontal lines) to separate major sections, and use a 10-to-12-
point conservative typeface for the body text of the resume. Aim for 1-inch side margins and
slightly smaller top and bottom margins. (If your target school specifies these guidelines, make
sure you adhere to their specific requests.)
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6. Include publications, patents, presentations, honors, relevant volunteer experiences, and

professional licenses or certifications in your resume. These extras can sometimes be the
factor that piques their attention and makes them eager to read the other components of your
application. (If youre applying for certain degrees such as any research degree your
publications and research experiences are not extras at all, but a key part of the document.)

7. Edit and proofread mercilessly. Edit your resume to reduce fluff and make every word count.
Set your resume aside for a few days and then come back to it again with fresh eyes. Misspelled
words and grammatical mistakes are the proverbial kiss of death in a resume. Eliminate them.

8. Place your education after your experience if youve been in the workforce for more than
five years. If the degree you earned is the most relevant or impressive detail of your education
section, highlight it. If the school you attended is the selling point, emphasize it.

9. Use a two-page resume if appropriate. Two-page resumes are fine (and in some cases,
preferable) if youve been in the workforce for about ten years or more or have particularly
impressive work experience. Depending on your field and the degree youre targeting, you may
have a longer CV with a detailed list of publications, etc. (Once again, if your target school puts a
limit on the page count, go by their rules, not ours.)

The Donts:

1. Dont make things up or inflate your accomplishments, level of responsibility, or skills.

2. Dont confuse your resume with your autobiography. While there are many pieces of
information that your resume must have, its primary purpose is to focus on the aspects of your life
and career that address the employers needs. Youll have the rest of your application to highlight
your lifes most important stories.

3. Dont use pronouns (I) or articles (a, the). They detract from the force of your
accomplishments, slow down the reader, and take up precious space.

4. Dont provide personal data. Marital status, date of birth, height/weight, and similar non-
work-related information can be used to illegally discriminate against applicants, and they rarely
add anything of value to your qualifications.

5. Dont repeat the same action words throughout the resume. Instead of using the
verb developed or led over and over, pull out your thesaurus and mix in terms
like accelerated, delivered, directed, established, initiated, or reengineered.

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6. Dont leave out dates. Even if you choose the functional resume format to minimize frequent
job changes or lack of experience, include your dates of employment somewhere on your resume
(usually at the end).

7. Dont use more detail than you need to convey your accomplishments. Dense, paragraph-
sized bullet points make for tough reading. A good rule of thumb is to limit each bullet to one to
two lines of text with three to five accomplishments for each position.

8. Dont use clichd adjectives like dynamic or self-starting. Let the details of your resume
convince the adcom reader that you have these qualities.

9. Dont make your resume a list of your job duties make it a list of your accomplishments!
Weave your job responsibilities into your descriptions of your accomplishments.

Do you need help putting together a stand-out resume? Or do you have a professional resume and
need help transforming it into one suitable to send in with your application? Browse our catalog
of admissions resume services and choose the one that meets your unique needs.

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Putting it All Together

MBA and other graduate school applicants frequently submit a resume with their applications.
Many schools require it, and some schools, such as Columbia Business School, even specify a
given format. The resume not only will present a valuable context for your other materials, but it
also will give the adcom readers an easy point of reference as they read your essays.

To use the resume strategically in the application, you must align it with your essays. First,
follow the basic rules of good resume writing for your application resume. Beyond that, there are
several points to consider in preparing your resume for your graduate school applications:

1. Approach your application holistically.

The resume can free up space in your essays. By summarizing your experience, responsibilities,
and achievements in the resume, you dont have to worry about cramming every noteworthy item
into your essays or sketching out your career path. Rather, you can be very selective and detailed
in the experiences you do elaborate on in the essays. These two components, the essays and the
resume, should complement each other rather than being redundant. When they harmonize, they
sharpen your message and give both depth and breadth to your application.

2. Be consistent in your resume and essays.

Refer to companies, job titles, departments, technologies, and other items in the same way in both
pieces. Not only does this practice prevent confusion, it also heightens the unity and coherence of
the overall application.

3. Use your resume to highlight your strengths.

Review your essays and determine whether there are particular skills, abilities, talents, or
experiences that you should reinforce. Then use your resume to do so. For example, if your verbal
score was low, presumably you demonstrated your verbal skills in your essays. Use the resume to
further strengthen the impression of strong verbal skills.

4. Use your goals to anchor your application essays and statements of purpose.

Everything you write, including your resume, should directly or indirectly relate to your goals. In
selecting the experiences and accomplishments to highlight, give the resume a slant that reflects
your goals.

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Conclusion

Thanks for checking out The Quick Guide to Admissions Resumes!

Now it's time to move from general tips to personalized advice tailored just for you. Explore our
admissions consulting and editing services and work 1-on-1 with a pro who will help you get
ACCEPTED.

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