If you are a high school student getting ready for college or an undergrad getting ready for graduate school, then you can never start preparing your education resume too soon.  Really, a college resume is generally used for high school students but really, anyone applying to a college or university needs one.  What information you include and how you present it can have a tremendous effect on your future.  It is the way you make your first impression with some very important people at the institutions of your choice.

After all, everyone from assistants to the dean of your chosen field to the dean of admissions to your future adviser will be seeing your education resume.  It will give them all their first idea about who you are.  If you present them with a badly written, poorly organized resume which is too long or too short, well, that can all be very telling.  Do you want something like that to be your first impression?  Excuses will not work; for instance, you may not get the chance to explain that you are better at math and science than you are at writing.

So, what is an education resume, exactly?  By all accounts, it is simply a college resume, but it is especially well suited to those seeking an educated related degree.  Just as you will later submit a CV and a resume to potential employers, it is the way you introduce yourself to the admissions department of the college or university you want to attend.  While it is not the place to list all the activities in your school and community in which you have been involve, it is where you highlight all the accomplishments you have attained during your high school years.  Given how competitive the wide world of college acceptance is these days, you can understand why it is so important to create a good resume.

This is not like a typical functional or chronological resume, though you do begin with the heading.  Like a regular resume, it contains your personal information: name, address, et cetera.  Generally, you should include your social security number rather than your phone number or email address – at least that used to be the case.  Especially if you are uncomfortable with the idea, check with a particular institution to see what their preferences are.  Usually, this is really a specification geared more towards high school students applying for college rather than those applying to graduate schools.

Following the heading of your education resume, you need to talk about your education.  This section needs to be incredibly detailed, from including the name and address of your previous institution to your GPA – but only if it is a 3.0 or above.  In the final section, you list your activities, which is the main reason for doing this type of college resume.  You especially want to include community and high school activities.

For a lot of us, getting a free resume template off the internet can help us.  In fact, for some of us, finding one is the only way we know how to set up our resume.  The problem there is – well, what if you get a dud?  What if you find and use a template that you think is great, only to find that your potential employers do not like it?  That can happen quite easily, especially if you are not used to writing and sending out resumes.  Quite a few of us find ourselves in that position once we graduate from college.  At a time when the job market seems to be getting tighter of the minute, we simply cannot afford to be so inexperienced.  Fortunately, there are a number of things you can look for in order to make sure you are getting a layout which will make your resume stand out in the best way possible.

The first step towards choosing a free resume template is knowing what kind you need.  For example, would you prefer to write a chronological resume?  This type of resume is good for people who are continuing on their chosen career paths.  For example, if you are moving linearly or laterally in a field which you have been working in for quite a long time, you would do well with this type of resume.  If, however, you are trying to enter into a new market, you might prefer a functional resume.  This allows you to list your skills and attributes, so that you can better convince a prospective employer that you are the perfect person to fill the position.  Or, if you prefer to highlight both your skills and your technical merits, then perhaps you might fare better with the combination resume – naturally, a combination between the two.

A free resume template can only go so far, however.  For that reason, especially if you are not familiar with writing one, then you may also look for a site which also shows you how to write a resume.  There are many of these – in fact, templates generally show what goes where by including generic examples.  The template might be for John Everyman, from Everytown, USA.  Still, it will illustrate where you need to place your personal and contact information, where you place your education history, your work history, your special skills, et cetera.  It will outline thoroughly exactly what you need to include, how many details are expected, and even how detailed you should be when listing your information.

One thing you do need to be careful of is the style of any free resume template you are considering.  For example, you might think that the template with lots of colors and fancy designs is really nifty.  However, to a potential employer, it may make your resume look cluttered and messy, even disorganized and sloppy.  When writing a CV and a resume, you need to be as professional as possible – and they need to look as professional as possible.  A good resume contains well written, concise but detail information explaining why you are the best candidate for the job.  It is not the place to show your artistic side or to clutter the pertinent information with fancy formatting.