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My top choice school emailed me today asking me to send an updated resume. I've never heard of this happening to anyone. (Has this?) I graduated last May, and haven't added anything on my resume since then because I've been just travelling, tutoring, spending time with family, etc. I now think this could have looked as a huge gap on my resume, and will seriously hurt my chances. Has anybody taken a gap year during which you did nothing professional? And if so, how did you fill in the gap on your resume? ANY sort of help would be appreciated. I feel like adding a couple lines about tutoring, waitressing, etc. isn't what the school is ideally looking for, but I guess this is what I should do..?

I would say just list your tutoring efforts.

Or link this video https://youtu.be/eKFjWR7X5dU

If I were you, I would be glad that my top choice school was interested enough to ask for an updated resume. I may be wrong but I doubt they would go through the trouble to email someone they weren't already considering.

To answer your question, just write a few lines about the tutoring (and whatever else you've done). You might mention in the email that you've spent time traveling, etc. and thats why the resume is somewhat bare since May. That's really all you can do. There's nothing wrong with taking time off anyway.

supermanloi wrote:My top choice school emailed me today asking me to send an updated resume. I've never heard of this happening to anyone. (Has this?) I graduated last May, and haven't added anything on my resume since then because I've been just travelling, tutoring, spending time with family, etc. I now think this could have looked as a huge gap on my resume, and will seriously hurt my chances. Has anybody taken a gap year during which you did nothing professional? And if so, how did you fill in the gap on your resume? ANY sort of help would be appreciated. I feel like adding a couple lines about tutoring, waitressing, etc. isn't what the school is ideally looking for, but I guess this is what I should do..?

If you were tutoring throughout the duration of your gap year (even if it wasn't exactly full time), you can probably say you were/are self-employed. Obviously you probably can't say that if you only tutored like 3 sessions over the past 7 months, but it sounds like you've been consistent with it. You could include waitressing as well and say that it was for supplement income or something of that nature.

I obviously don't know about adcomms, since I'm not an adcomms pro, but as someone who's looked at resumes/interviewed people for my office, a gap year CAN be a red flag, but mostly if it's kind of obvious you were just sitting on your couch living off your parents or unemployment. If you were actually doing something, and I'd definitely count tutoring/waitressing and even travelling as doing something, I personally wouldn't have counted it against you.

However, that's just my take, so take it with a grain of salt!