I'm an undergrad. How long should my resume be? Forum

[ayylmao]

I'm going to blanket the t-8 this fall and am looking for some advice about constructing my resume. Whereas it's utterly unacceptable to write a more-than-one-page resume in the business world, several law schools explicitly allow resumes to contain more descriptive information and go over one page.

However, I suspect that they make this allowance so that people who have been out of college for several years have space to talk about their accomplishments. While I have a lot of (I hope) good stuff I want to communicate to admissions officers in my resume, I don't want to seem presumptuous by filling two pages. Any sages have advice? It'd be very much appreciated.

[StopLawying]

I'm going to blanket the t-8 this fall and am looking for some advice about constructing my resume. Whereas it's utterly unacceptable to write a more-than-one-page resume in the business world, several law schools explicitly allow resumes to contain more descriptive information and go over one page.

However, I suspect that they make this allowance so that people who have been out of college for several years have space to talk about their accomplishments. While I have a lot of (I hope) good stuff I want to communicate to admissions officers in my resume, I don't want to seem presumptuous by filling two pages. Any sages have advice? It'd be very much appreciated.

Had the same concern as you and I asked several people this very question. Most told me that going over a page is absolutely fine. I tried my best to fit everything onto one page (played around with margins, font, etc) but it was almost impossible. Keep in mind though that I was very active on campus so I had a pretty big activities/leadership section. I figured it's best to include everything I've done rather than exclude some of the things in order to fit everything into a single page.

[Hildegard15]

I only had 1 year of WE when I pressed submit on my applications and my resume was 1.5 pages. Don't worry if you have to go onto the second page.

[cavalier1138]

Is "T-8" a thing now?

[ayylmao]

Is "T-8" a thing now?

no

[TLSModBot]

Length isn't everything; people also care about girth.

[xRON MEXiCOx]

I dont understand how anyone can have a resume that exceeds one page. I've been out of college for 7 years and my resume is comfortably one page.

[zeglo]

.

[sims1]

It sounds like you know the answer. Mess with the margins and white space to fit a lot on one page, but it really should be able to fit on there (and it will need to be one page for OCI anyway).

[nick417]

Do not go over one page for a resume. I don't know who told you that it is acceptable to go over one page but they are wrong. As law students, applying for real jobs, we are told to keep the resume to one page.

Even assuming you have enough interesting information about yourself to fill up more than one page, you are only harming yourself by putting more in a resume. Why? Because no admission person is going to spend their time reading everything in your resume. Resumes are skimmed. Longer resumes will be skimmed even faster. Moreover, it makes your resume less appealing to read.

Frankly, if I were an admission person, and an undergrad submitted a two-page resume, this would already be one strike against that person.

[StopLawying]

Do not go over one page for a resume. I don't know who told you that it is acceptable to go over one page but they are wrong. As law students, applying for real jobs, we are told to keep the resume to one page.

Even assuming you have enough interesting information about yourself to fill up more than one page, you are only harming yourself by putting more in a resume. Why? Because no admission person is going to spend their time reading everything in your resume. Resumes are skimmed. Longer resumes will be skimmed even faster. Moreover, it makes your resume less appealing to read.

Frankly, if I were an admission person, and an undergrad submitted a two-page resume, this would already be one strike against that person.

Read this pls:
http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/debunk ... sume-myth/

[jnwa]

Honestly this probably matters so ridiculously little that its not even worth worrying about.

[StopLawying]

Honestly this probably matters so ridiculously little that its not even worth worrying about.

This exactly .

[Steak n Potatoes]

Very confident there is no problem with going over 1 page for law school apps. This is entirely anecdotal, but I blanketed all the top schools and got into all but one, a far better outcome than I was ever expecting going in. Despite relatively little work experience, I actually turned in a 1.5ish page resume to most and a single paged to a few. Though this doesn't even approach pseudoscience, let alone science, it seems like the schools I submitted the longer resumes to actually admitted me earlier in their cycles and offered larger scholarships. I'm not trying to argue that the length had a substantial positive impact on admissions decisions, but there was certainly no evidence of a negative impact.

P.S. One area where I believe a longer resume could (perhaps) positively impact your application is if you are able to go into more depth about written scholarship you've done (or something else that would matter to legal admissions) that you were not able to get to in your personal statement and other parts of your application.

P.P.S. Also, if it helps, the reason I did some one page and others longer was that the language from some schools seemed to actually encourage longer resumes if necessary, whereas the language from others implied that it was "fine" but perhaps not as strongly supported. Something you may want to keep your eye out for. Or not, if you choose.

Hope this helps in some small way.

[rinkrat19]

I am a law grad, have 10 years of post-undergrad work plus 3 legal jobs, totaling 7 jobs & 3 volunteer gigs, and my resume is 1 page.

[HYPSM]

I think the better question here is what you think this "T-8" is.

[nick417]

Do not go over one page for a resume. I don't know who told you that it is acceptable to go over one page but they are wrong. As law students, applying for real jobs, we are told to keep the resume to one page.

Even assuming you have enough interesting information about yourself to fill up more than one page, you are only harming yourself by putting more in a resume. Why? Because no admission person is going to spend their time reading everything in your resume. Resumes are skimmed. Longer resumes will be skimmed even faster. Moreover, it makes your resume less appealing to read.

Frankly, if I were an admission person, and an undergrad submitted a two-page resume, this would already be one strike against that person.

Read this pls:
http://blog.spiveyconsulting.com/debunk ... sume-myth/

Oh no! You got me with a random blog post. Kudos to you.

However, I ultimately agree with what was said above: this is such an irrelevant portion of the law school application.

[Hildegard15]

No strikes are going to go against you if your resume goes over a page. This is not a job application. Everyone here who says you must stick to one page are conflating admissions with the job search. Multiple admissions officers have publicly stated they do not care if you go over a page, and in fact encourage you to do so if it means your resume will be more presentable and thorough. For example, on a job application I wouldn't include a one sentence description of my senior thesis. For a law school app I would. Ditto for various other experiences of mine.

[Redfactor]

No strikes are going to go against you if your resume goes over a page. This is not a job application. Everyone here who says you must stick to one page are conflating admissions with the job search. Multiple admissions officers have publicly stated they do not care if you go over a page, and in fact encourage you to do so if it means your resume will be more presentable and thorough. For example, on a job application I wouldn't include a one sentence description of my senior thesis. For a law school app I would. Ditto for various other experiences of mine.

I think this is the right approach. This isn't a job application where you're only going to have 5 seconds to 2 minutes in order to impress someone enough for an interview. If making your resume longer will help illustrate who you are and why the law school should want to admit you, then do it.