The college student resume template
Students and new graduates have less work history than other applicants, so the resume is organized differently. Education goes near the top while it is your strongest credential. After it come the sections that carry real evidence: relevant coursework and projects, internships and jobs, activities and leadership, and skills. Keep the page to one column and one page. The layout is the same for a sample resume for a college student in any subject; only the content changes.
| Section | Freshman | Junior or senior | Recent graduate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top | Name, contact, one-line objective for a campus or summer job | Name, contact, two-line summary naming the target role | Name, contact, two-line summary with degree and field |
| First section | Education | Education, or the internship if it is strong | Experience, then Education |
| Core evidence | Coursework, a class project, club role | Internship, projects, a leadership role | Internship, capstone, part-time job |
| Skills | Software and languages from the ad | Tools and methods from the ad | Tools and methods from the ad |
| Leave out | High school detail unless it is recent and strong | Early coursework that does not support the role | Anything older than four years that does not support the role |
If you are applying for a first job from a school rather than a college, the high school resume and first-job resume guides fit you better.
College freshman resume example: no experience yet
A college freshman resume usually has one page of potential and no job titles. Lead with education and use what you did in high school and your first term to fill the page: a class project, a club, volunteering, a part-time job. The sample below is written for a campus job and is invented, so swap in your own details.
Jordan Reyes
Objective. First-year student seeking a part-time library or office assistant role on campus; organized, reliable and comfortable with spreadsheets.
Education. Riverside State University, B.A. in Communication, expected May 2030. GPA 3.7. Courses: Public Speaking, Intro to Statistics.
Activities. Treasurer, Debate Club: kept a $1,200 budget and reported to 30 members each month. Volunteer, community food pantry: sorted and logged 400 items a week.
Skills. Excel and Google Sheets, event planning, public speaking, Spanish (conversational).
College student resume example: a junior with an internship
By your third year, an internship or a serious project is your best material, so it can sit above education. Use results and numbers, and name the tools. This sample is for a marketing internship application.
Hannah Cho
Summary. Marketing major with a summer internship in social media and email, looking for a spring marketing internship.
Experience. Marketing Intern, Harbor Coffee Roasters, June to August 2026. Scheduled 40 social posts a month; grew the email list from 600 to 850 subscribers with a sign-up offer; wrote the weekly newsletter in Mailchimp.
Projects. Consumer Behavior class: surveyed 85 students and presented the findings to a local business.
Education. Lakeshore University, B.S. in Marketing, expected May 2028. Dean's List, four terms.
Recent college graduate resume example
A recent graduate has a finished degree and a short but real record. Put the experience first if it matches the job, and keep education to two lines with the degree, the school and the year. Include a capstone or thesis when it shows a skill the job asks for. This is an example resume for a recent graduate seeking a data entry and reporting role.
Tom Okafor
Summary. Business graduate with two years of part-time operations work and strong Excel skills, seeking a junior analyst role.
Experience. Inventory Assistant (part-time), Metro Hardware, 2024 to 2026. Reconciled weekly stock counts for 2,500 items and cut count errors by about a fifth with a simple check sheet.
Capstone. Built a pricing model in Excel for a local bakery as a team of four; presented it to the owner.
Education. B.B.A., Business Administration, Northfield University, May 2026. Skills: Excel (pivot tables, lookups), SQL basics, data cleaning.
Bullets from classes, clubs and campus jobs
Every bullet should say what you did, how much and what changed. Coursework counts when you name what you produced: “Analyzed a dataset of 1,200 survey responses and presented three findings” is evidence; “took a statistics class” is not. Group work counts if you say what your part was. If a bullet has no number, give it a scale, such as how many people, how often or how long. For a longer set of examples, see resume accomplishments. For a student with no work history at all, the first-job resume guide shows a layout built from school and activities.
How to make a college resume in five steps
- Pick one target: a campus job, an internship or a graduate role, and read two ads for it.
- Open the template above and put your name, contact details and a short summary at the top.
- List your education with the degree, the school and the expected or actual date; add a GPA only if it is 3.5 or higher.
- Add the two or three entries that best match the ad, each with two or three result bullets.
- Add a skills line from the ad, then cut to one page and save as a PDF.
Where college resumes lose the reader
The usual faults are a list of duties instead of results, an objective that says what you want and not what you offer, a page of unrelated activities, and a design so busy that the text is hard to read. Another is sending the same resume to every posting. Match the top third to each ad and the rest follows. You can check the finished file with the ATS resume checker, and the one-page resume guide shows what to cut first.
Unpaid roles belong on the page as well; see how to list volunteer work on a resume. The degree line is covered in the resume education section guide.
Sources
Checked on 12 October 2026.