Student resume examples and templates for 2026

How to format a student resume

Keep the resume to one page. Recruiters at large graduate programs and campus career fairs spend roughly six to ten seconds on a first scan, so every line needs to earn its place. Use a clean single-column or two-column layout with 10 to 12 point body text, half-inch to one-inch margins, and a standard font such as Calibri, Georgia, or Helvetica.

Save and send the file as a PDF unless the job posting asks for a Word document. Applicant tracking systems used by most mid-size and large employers in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia parse PDFs reliably as of 2026.

• Name and contact details at the top: email, phone, LinkedIn URL, city and state or city and country
• No photo, no date of birth, no marital status (standard in the US, Canada, and Australia; a photo is still common in some European roles but not required in the UK)
• Consistent date format throughout, for example May 2024 or 05/2024, not both
• Bold your section headings so a recruiter can jump to the part they want

What order to put sections in

Students should put Education near the top, directly below contact details, until they have two or more years of full-time professional experience. After that, work experience moves up. The logic is simple: your degree is your main credential right now.

A typical order for a current student looks like this.

1. Contact information
2. Education (degree, university, expected graduation month and year, GPA if 3.5 or above)
3. Relevant coursework or academic projects (optional but useful when you lack work experience)
4. Work experience or internships
5. Skills
6. Extracurricular activities, leadership, or volunteer work

Student resume examples by situation

The three templates below are starting points. Replace the bracketed text with your own details and adjust the bullet points to match what you actually did.

• No work experience: 'Bachelor of Science in Marketing, University of Toronto, expected April 2027. Relevant coursework: Consumer Behaviour, Digital Analytics, Brand Strategy. Class project: led a four-person team that built a social media campaign for a local nonprofit, growing their Instagram following by 340 followers over eight weeks.'
• One internship: 'Marketing Intern, Greenfield Agency, Sydney, June 2025 to August 2025. Drafted copy for three client email campaigns with a combined list of 12,000 subscribers. Researched competitor pricing for a retail client and summarised findings in a slide deck presented to the account director.'
• Campus leadership plus freelance: 'Vice President, Finance Society, University of Edinburgh, September 2024 to present. Managed a £2,400 annual budget, coordinated six speaker events, and grew paid membership from 80 to 130 students. Freelance bookkeeper for two small businesses, reconciling monthly accounts in QuickBooks.'

How to write bullet points that get noticed

Each bullet should follow the pattern: action verb, what you did, and a result or scale where you have one. Avoid vague phrases like 'assisted with' or 'helped to'. Use the verb that describes what you actually did.

If you do not have a number, describe the scope. 'Wrote weekly social posts for a student newspaper read by 4,000 students' is stronger than 'wrote social media content'. If you genuinely have no scale to give, describe the output: 'Produced a 15-page research report on supply chain disruptions, graded distinction.'

• Strong: 'Analysed survey data from 200 respondents in Excel and presented three recommendations to a panel of faculty judges'
• Weak: 'Helped with data analysis for a class project'
• Strong: 'Tutored five first-year students in introductory calculus over one semester, all five passed their end-of-term exam'
• Weak: 'Tutored students in math'

Skills section: what to include and what to leave out

List tools and skills that are specific and verifiable. Group them into two or three short categories if the list is long. Leave out soft skills like 'good communicator' or 'team player' because every resume says the same thing and recruiters ignore them.

Examples of skills worth listing: Python (pandas, matplotlib), Tableau, SQL, Adobe Illustrator, Figma, Salesforce, Google Analytics 4, SPSS, AutoCAD, Xero, Final Cut Pro. If you completed a short course or certification, add it in brackets: 'Google Analytics 4 (certified, 2025)'.

Tailoring your resume for each application

A generic resume performs worse than a tailored one because most employers use applicant tracking systems that score resumes against the job description before a human reads them. Read the posting carefully and mirror the exact language it uses. If the posting says 'stakeholder communication', use that phrase rather than 'talking to clients'.

Break-In Bad's resume builder can help here. Omar reads your existing resume through a short conversation of up to 20 questions, then rewrites it to match a specific job posting using only facts you confirm. She checks every line against what you said and keeps your original file. If you are starting from scratch, the build-from-scratch option walks you through the whole document. Credits start at 25 for $9, and new accounts get 50 free credits on signup.