Academic Resumes

An academic resume emphasizes your academic accomplishments and your involvement while in school because it is understood that most students don't have any professional experience yet.  There is no official limit to how long your academic resume can be, but it's unlikely you'll need more than two pages.  

Professional resumes, on the other hand, emphasize and summarize your professional skills and experiences; they are typically limited to one page, unless you have extensive professional experience.  In that case, you can expand to two pages, but that's generally frowned upon.

The purpose of an academic resume is to provide additional information about your achievements beyond what is obvious from your transcript or transfer application. 

It should include your previous five years of academic, extracurricular, community, and work activities and your honors and awards. You can also include high school accomplishments if they took place within the last five years. 

Be sure to include:

• All your achievements, not just those that didn’t fit on the application.

• Details about what each activity involved rather than a general description.

• The number of hours per week and weeks per year you spent on each activity.

ACC's Transfer Services has a short guide to Academic Resumes.

ACC's Career Services also offers a guide to professional resumes that may help you plan and organize for your Academic Resume.