How to Write a Resume for College Students, Even With No Experience

A resume for college students has one job: show a recruiter, on one page, that you can do what their posting asks for. You don't need internships to do that. Class projects, a campus job, a club role or volunteer work all count, as long as each line shows what you did and what came of it.

This guide covers what to include and in what order, how to write bullets when you have no formal experience, what employers say they look for, how to format a resume so applicant tracking software reads it, and how to tailor it for each application. Internship applications for next summer are open now, so it's worth getting a solid version done this month.

What to include on a resume as a college student

Use these sections, in roughly this order. Harvard's career office says to order headings by importance and list entries in each section most recent first (Harvard).

Leave off references, and skip the "references available upon request" line: MIT's career office says employers already assume it (MIT). Berkeley calls interests and hobbies optional and one of the first sections to cut when you run out of space; keep one only if it shows a skill such as running events or managing money (Berkeley). High school entries can fill out a first-year resume; drop them as college entries take their place.

How to make a resume with no experience

Every college student has more material than they think. The trick is describing it the way you'd describe a job. MIT's career office counts class projects, competitions and personal projects as experience, as long as you describe each one so its relevance is clear.

Turn coursework into projects

A semester-long lab, a research paper, a group case study or a coding assignment is a project. Give it a title, the course, and two bullets on what you built or found. If you're in computer science, the projects from a course such as the free Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python give you code you can link and explain.

Treat campus jobs and volunteer work as real jobs

A dining hall, library or front-desk job shows reliability, customer service and working under pressure. Write those bullets with the same care as an internship. Volunteer work counts the same way: Berkeley's career center says volunteer roles don't need to be labeled "volunteer" or listed in a separate section.

Show the role, not the membership

"Member, Finance Club" says little. "Organized a 40-person stock pitch competition for Finance Club" says you planned, coordinated and delivered something.

Add a short "Relevant coursework" line

If the posting asks for skills your classes taught, add one line under Education listing three to five relevant upper-level courses. Skip intro courses everyone in your major takes.

Ask about a lab or research role

A semester on a professor's project gives a first- or second-year student a real Experience entry. The guide on how to email a professor has a template for asking about undergraduate research.

Keep the chronological format anyway

Some guides suggest a functional resume, which groups skills without dates, when you have little experience, and Berkeley says that format can suit you then. For online applications, though, UT Austin's College of Natural Sciences career office says both applicant tracking systems and recruiters work better with experience organized chronologically (UT Austin). A chronological resume with a strong Projects section gives your skills the same room without that risk.

How to write resume bullets: the formula

Start each bullet with a strong action verb, say what you did, and end with the result. Berkeley's career center recommends strong action verbs and quantifying results where you can, and MIT's office puts it as recording accomplishments, not just responsibilities. MIT adds a detail most guides skip: say how you did the work, such as the programming language you wrote in or the lab technique you used, so the skill shows up in context and not only in your Skills line.

Verb + what you did + result (with a number when you have one)

The rows are invented to show the pattern. On your own resume, use a number only when it's true and you can explain it in an interview. "Many" and "various" add nothing; a real count adds credibility. The free Technical and Professional Writing course has a section on resumes, cover letters and other employment documents if you want more practice with this kind of writing.

What employers look for on a college student's resume

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) asks employers each year which attributes they look for on new graduates' resumes. In its Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update, released April 23, the most cited were the ability to work in a team (85% of the 163 employers who answered), problem-solving (82%) and verbal communication (78%). Technical skills, written communication, a strong work ethic and analytical skills each drew between 70% and 73% (NACE). In the previous year's survey, problem-solving led at nearly 90%, with teamwork near 80% (NACE). The career fair guide shows how to bring the same skills up in a booth conversation.

Two NACE findings change how you write. First, listing a skill isn't enough: employers want to see an example of it. So instead of a "Skills: teamwork, problem-solving" line, put the evidence in your bullets: the team project you led, the problem you fixed at your campus job. Second, GPA does less of the screening than it used to. In NACE's Job Outlook 2026 survey, 42% of employers screened candidates by GPA, compared with 73% in 2019 (NACE). Your projects and experience carry more of the weight.

The free English Composition I section on employer priorities and cross-cutting skills looks at which skills employers value across majors, and it comes with a free career resilience simulator.

How to get your resume past applicant tracking systems

UT Austin's natural sciences career office describes an applicant tracking system (ATS) as software many employers use to collect, rank, sort and review resumes before a recruiter or hiring manager sees them, comparing each one with the posting. Here's what these systems struggle with, and what to do instead:

• Tables, columns, graphics and text boxes. Use a single column of plain text. Berkeley's list of things to avoid adds colors and pictures.
• Design-site templates and LaTeX. The UT Austin office says ATS can't accurately read resumes coded in LaTeX or made on design sites like Canva. Start from a Word or Google Docs template.
• Unusual section names. Berkeley suggests standard titles like Education, Projects and Experience, and Penn's career office says standard headers help with Workday, one of the systems it lists as common at Fortune 500 companies (Penn).
• Headers, footers and symbols. Penn also warns against putting information in headers and footers, and against special graphics or symbols, which can confuse the parser.
• Bare acronyms. Penn suggests writing out the term with the acronym after it, such as "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)", so the system catches the full scope of what you did.

Keep a designed version for in-person events if you like, but upload the plain one to online applications.

Resume format: length, GPA, fonts and file type

• Length: one page. Berkeley recommends a simple one-page format for college students and says most student resumes fit on one page when experiences are described concisely. MIT says to stick to one page unless you have extensive experience or an advanced degree, and UT Austin's Liberal Arts career office calls a resume usually a one-page document (UT Austin Liberal Arts).
• GPA: Berkeley's rule of thumb is to include it if it's 3.0 or above. If your major GPA is higher than your cumulative GPA, Penn's career office suggests listing both, with the number of courses the major GPA covers, as in "Major GPA: 3.64 (4 courses), Cumulative GPA: 3.35" (Penn).
• Fonts and margins: MIT suggests a conservative font no smaller than 10 point and margins of at least half an inch. Berkeley gives Times New Roman as an example of a standard font.
• File type: Berkeley says to use a Word or Google Doc or convert to PDF, and to follow each application's instructions on which format to upload. If you send a PDF, Harvard advises checking that your formatting survived the conversion.
• Leave out: photos, age, gender, references and personal pronouns, per Harvard's guide. MIT adds religion, health and marital status, and says photos are generally not preferred on US resumes.
• Name the file well: "Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf", not "resume final v3.pdf".

How to tailor your resume for each application

You don't need a new resume for every posting, but you do need to adjust it. MIT suggests keeping a master resume with everything on it and building a targeted version for each role. UT Austin suggests listing the keywords in the posting, noting which repeat, ranking them, and working in the ones that match your experience. NACE notes that many employers name the skills a role needs right in the job description, so the posting is your guide.

1. Copy the posting into a document and highlight skills, tools and duties.
2. Reorder your bullets so the closest matches come first under each entry.
3. Swap in the posting's wording where it's accurate. Penn's advice is to use the same language the job description uses: if it asks for "leadership experience", say leadership experience.
4. Move a stronger project above a weaker job if it fits the role better.
5. Save it under a new file name and log which version went where. The summer 2027 internships guide has tracker columns for this, and shows when each field's applications open.

The free audience adaptation demo in the Technical Writing course shows the same principle on a smaller scale: write for the reader who has to act on it.

A college student resume example, section by section

Here is a made-up example: the skeleton of a one-page resume for a second-year student with no internships, applying for a data or business internship. The school, courses and numbers are invented for illustration. Swap in your own entries.

Your Name · City, State · phone · school email · LinkedIn URL

Education

• State University, B.S. in Economics, expected May 2029 · GPA 3.4
• Relevant coursework: Intermediate Microeconomics, Statistics for Business, Intro to Databases

Projects

• Campus food pantry demand study (Statistics for Business): Collected 8 weeks of visit data and built a spreadsheet model that predicted weekly demand; shared findings with the pantry's student coordinators
• Personal budget tracker: Built a Google Sheets tracker with automated monthly summaries; used it to plan a semester budget

Experience

• Library circulation assistant, State University Libraries (Sept. 2025 to present): Checked out and shelved materials across 12 hours of shifts a week; trained 3 new student workers on the checkout system

Leadership and activities

• Treasurer, Economics Society: Tracked a club budget and filed reimbursement requests with student government

Skills

• Excel (pivot tables, lookups), Google Sheets, basic SQL, Spanish (conversational)

Notice the order: Education and Projects come before the job, because for this posting they're the stronger evidence. A student applying for a customer-facing role might put Experience first instead. If a posting asks for Excel and you've only used it casually, the free section on spreadsheet management and data visualization covers the formulas and charts you'd want to be able to talk through in an interview.

Before you send it: a checklist

• One page, one column, standard headings
• Education first, with expected graduation date and GPA if 3.0+
• Every bullet starts with a verb and shows a result
• No typos and no missing contact details: Harvard lists spelling and grammar errors, and a missing email or phone number, among the top five resume mistakes
• Read aloud, then proofread by someone else; MIT suggests a few readers, ideally including a career advisor
• An email address you'll still check after graduation
• Tailored to this posting, saved in the format the application asks for, with your name in the file name

Your campus career center will usually review it. Berkeley, Harvard and MIT all offer resume reviews by appointment or at drop-in hours, so check your own school's career center site for the same. If a professor will vouch for your work, the guide on how to ask for a letter of recommendation covers how to ask.