Scholarship resume examples & templates

A resume for a scholarship helps the committee understand your achievements, motivation, and academic record. This guide will walk you through writing a scholarship resume and offers an adaptable example to get you started.

Resume guide for a scholarship resume

How to write a scholarship resume
• Choosing the right resume format for scholarship applications
• Include your contact information
• Make use of a summary
• Outline your scholarship-worthy academic and work experience
• Include the relevant key skills that make you a great scholarship candidate

Detail your education & relevant certifications
• Pick the right resume layout and design for a scholarship resume
• Scholarship resume text only

Key takeaways for building a scholarship resume

Scholarships play a crucial role in making higher education attainable and fostering both personal and professional growth for high school students. They are also a key factor in promoting educational equity and preparing future generations for success.

If you’re a high school student facing the high price tag of tuition and other educational costs, scholarships can help to offer financial relief and reduce stress as you transition into your college studies.

According to the College Board, approximately $6 billion in private scholarships and institutional grants are awarded annually. If you’re ready to earn some of that money for your studies, you’ll need a great resume showcasing your motivation and academic success.

Resume guide for a scholarship resume

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This resume guide and corresponding scholarship resume example will cover the following:

• How to write a scholarship resume
• Choosing the right resume format for scholarships
• How to add your contact information
• Using summaries
• Adding your experience
• Listing education and relevant experience
• Picking the right resume design/layout

How to write a scholarship resume

The first step in writing your scholarship resume is understanding what sections to include. Your resume should contain the following elements:

• The resume header
• The resume summary (aka profile or personal statement)
• The employment history section
• The resume skills section
• The education section

While these sections are commonly geared towards job seekers, in this guide, we will discuss how to adapt each one for your high school education, including showcasing a wider range of experiences like volunteer work, clubs and organizations, after-school jobs, and leadership positions.

While writing your scholarship resume, consider this winning formula:

• Focus on your accomplishments, both academic and extracurricular. If you are not yet in your senior year, it’s not too late to join clubs, play sports, volunteer, and create valuable experiences to share on your resume. These are key to showing the scholarship committee you’re worthy of their scholarship.
• Highlight positions of responsibility, such as club president, team captain, or event organizer. Even if you didn’t hold an official title like secretary or treasurer, you can still discuss times when you went above and beyond to help the team or took charge of a particular project.
• Customize your resume for each scholarship you apply for. While the details of your experience may remain the same, at the very least you should mention the name of the scholarship in the summary or profile section. We’ll cover how to write a great summary later in this guide.

Choosing the right resume format for scholarship applications

Believe it or not, you have more flexibility when choosing a resume format for a summer job than when applying for scholarships! That’s because a restaurant or movie theater will hire you with limited experience, while a scholarship committee will only choose the best candidates with a proven track record of academic success.

That’s why we recommend choosing the reverse chronological resume format. For job seekers, this format focuses primarily on the employment history section, listed in reverse chronological order. For high school students, it’s possible to use this section to list all your high school activities, volunteer positions, sports clubs, after-school jobs, and more. This is the format of our adaptable scholarship resume example because it’s the structure that scholarship committees expect to see.

Other types of resume formats include the functional format and the hybrid resume format, but these structures are better saved for applying to jobs with limited experience.

Include your contact information

Your contact information is a crucial part of your scholarship resume as it allows the committee to contact you. Your contact details should go in an attractive and eye-catching header section at the top of the page. Here is the information to include:

• Full name. List your first and last name.
• Professional email address. Use a clean format like [email protected].
• Phone number. List a number where you can be easily contacted. Be sure to set up a professional voicemail greeting.
• Location. Nowadays it is only necessary to list your city and state.
• Links. If you have a LinkedIn profile, personal website, successful blog, photography, writing, coding portfolio, or other impressive link to share, you should add the URL to your header. However, do not include any personal social media profiles, websites, or blogs that contain unprofessional information that may affect the committee’s impression of you.

If applying in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K., don’t include:

• Date of birth: Not necessary since the committee knows you’re in high school.
• Personal details like social security number, passport number, etc.

Our adaptable scholarship resume sample can help you with creating an effective header.