<p>1) Do you think it matters what order you put them in? I think ds listed organizations and awards in order of what appealed to him most, so his sports participation is first and then the honors associated with the club of which he is president. Honors like AP Scholar with Distinction, Natl Commended, National Hispanic Scholar are way down the list, along with a neat district-level award he won for community service. And being an Eagle isn't even mentioned under awards; that's listed with Scouts under extracurricular activities.</p>
<p>He's not a recruitable athlete, so in a way it doesn't make sense to put that first. But does it even matter? And if it does matter, what do you think is more impressive -- AP Scholar w/Distinction, Commended or Hisp Scholar? The Commended threshold is higher than the one for Hisp Scholar, yet some of the schools he's looking at give big bucks for the Hisp Scholar and nuttin' for Commended, which implies they consider that the more desirable achievement.</p>
<p>I wasn’t in Scouts myself, but isn’t becoming an Eagle Scout a really big deal? I’m sure I’ve heard people say that it looks really good on a college application, so maybe it should be closer to the top under “achievements”. Can anyone back me up on this?</p>
<p>Seriously, I would put the academic awards ahead of the sporting ones. Your logic is correct - since he is not a recuited athlete, the academic side is more germane to his college apps.</p>
<p>After reading the advice on CC that schools want to see a student’s “passion”, we put the choir/music stuff first, because that is where Son had depth and passion. I think Scouts came next, because Eagle was the closest he came to “leadership.” Given the short attention span of lots of folks, I’d put first whatever showcases your son best.</p>
<p>SO HOW’S IT GOING WITH THE APPS? Hanging in there?</p>
<p>On the resume, DS grouped activities by area of interest. All science activities went together, employment, in school awards, out of school awards, volunteer work. Same for music (which was mostly in-school, but also some outside gigs). Scouts went next to some leadership stuff, I think.</p>
<p>I told him to try to group everything in 3 categories, because you need to keep it simple and clear for admissions readers who are trying to read x dozen applications/afternoon.</p>
<p>If by hanging in there you mean no one has been killed and no irreparable damage has been done to parent/child relationships, then, yeah. :D</p>
<p>Actually, yesterday we ran across a sample resume format on the UT website, so we might follow that lead. Slightly different headings and a very different format, but it’s easily doable. I like the one we had better, but I see the advantage to doing it the way they want and then it’s easier to compare apples to apples – and I think comparatively, ds’s apple polishes up well. Also they include hours on their resume, and we didn’t, figuring that was on the app, but if colleges want that, then fine.</p>
<p>I agree to put anything to do with academics first. Son did that even with those resumes going to coaches. He did academics, athletics, extracurricular athletics (summer teams, winter leagues etc), volunteer, work and then summer/camp stuff - in that order. On those sent to coaches he listed all his test scores in the same area that listed AP/accelerated/CIS classes and left off some stuff to make it fit all on one page and the second was for stats. I think whatever is done, it should make good visual sense and business sense. Don’t cram too much on a page (you can fudge with line spacing and even character spacing but don’t make the type face too small for sure. And I’d really try to limit it to no more than two pages. if you have much more than that, see where you might edit/combine. Of course, that’s just opinion on the ability to hold one’s attention for much more than that.</p>
<p>modadunn, at the UT info session, they say don’t EVEN try to get your resume down to one page. The ad rep said that two and three pages is fine, maybe preferred, because this is where you can further explain an acronym you may have used on the application because of space. She gave an example of more is more: She had just read a resume of a girl that listed every play the theater dept did through the years, but the applicant never explained whether she was the lead or a ticket taker.</p>
<p>Commended and AP Scholar w/ Distinction will be obvious, since they are due to the test scores the admissions folks have already seen. If the school doesn’t ask about ethnic identity up front, mentioning the Hisp. Scholar a little earlier might make them notice…
Eagle Scout is worth moving up above all the awards that are automatic for grades and scores. Until the last year or two, super-selective Rice actually broke that out as one of the distinctions in their entering class.</p>
<p>“I interview kids who want to attend the Ivy League college I attended. While I don’t remember interviewing any Eagle Scouts in that capacity, finding out during an interview that a kid had taken an oath to represent the ideals of BSA would be very difficult for me. I probably would change the subject because I typically like to keep such interviews non-confrontational.”</p>
<p>DH and DS said, “he/I worked hard for that Eagle award, and if a school counts it as a black mark, it was a mistake to apply there in the first place.”</p>
<p>But you might want to know that there are schools (or interviewers) out there that view the BSA negatively.</p>
<p>“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. My son is in a troop with a boy who has two moms. Not every troop and every kid supports every Scout policy.”</p>
<p>Thankfully, I think most of the schools he’s applying to won’t have a problem with it, but I certainly understand where people who aren’t in Scouts don’t realize that many of the rank-and-file don’t agree with the national organizations rules and so shouldn’t hold it against the kid.</p>
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Also they include hours on their resume, and we didn’t, figuring that was on the app, but if colleges want that, then fine.</p>