Recommended and optional application items Resumes, Recommendations & More
Resumes
A separate expanded resume can often help an applicant to be thorough when telling us about personal achievements. Although not required for admission (some honors programs do require resumes as part of the honors application), we strongly encourage you to submit an expanded resume if you feel that doing so will help us to get a complete picture of your activities, community service, honors and awards, and employment.
Tips for Your Expanded Resume
Resume length and content
Here are some suggestions to keep in mind when creating your expanded resume:
- The content of your resume, not its appearance, is what matters.
- Following the organization of our sample expanded resume (PDF, 24K) will help you to include the details we need, such as the hours per week and weeks per year you committed to each activity.
- Don’t be shy; be honest and thorough. Include details about each activity rather than listing something general like “community service” without any details about what that service involves.
- Your expanded resume can be any length. Although our sample resume is one page, resumes from some students need to be several pages long in order to be thorough. Repeating information in more than one part of your resume and using large font, however, won’t result in any benefits.
- If you do submit a resume, include details about all your personal achievements in your document (rather than listing some in the application and some on the resume). Having everything in one place makes it easier for the reviewer to get a clear picture of your accomplishments.
- Submitting a separate resume that simply lists the exact items that you listed on your ApplyTexas application is not necessary. Some students are able to list everything on their application; if that’s true in your case, there’s no need to submit a resume, too.
Submitting your resume
Submit your expanded resume well in advance of the admissions deadline:
- Use the university’s Resume Submission System to submit it electronically if you applied for admission online.
- If you submit your resume online, it can be no longer than 120 lines of text.
- The online resume submission system transmits information in plain text format. Column formatting, spacing, and font treatments are not maintained.
You may also mail or fax your expanded resume to the Office of Admissions.
Comprehensive information
Don’t be shy. Take time to remember and list everything that you’ve done over the past four years that may help us to see how you've excelled. Ask your friends and family to review your information before submitting it.
Recommendations
Meaningful information about how you have excelled academically or personally can also help to assure that we make the best admission decision possible; a well-written, sincere, personal letter of recommendation can offer such insight. Typically, however, we discourage applicants from asking for recommendations from people who don't know them well and from people who know them too well to be unbiased (like family members, for instance).
If you want to have someone write you a recommendation letter, be sure to ask them well in advance of the deadline so that they (or you) will have plenty of time to mail it or fax it us.
Recommendations for Honors Programs
Recommendations for freshman honors programs must be submitted using the online recommendation system.
Special Circumstances
Special circumstances in an applicant’s life sometimes help an application reviewer to get a clearer picture of an individual applicant's qualifications.
If you’d like us to consider a special circumstance in your life, please submit a letter or Essay C detailing your situation. If you'd prefer that someone else tell us about the circumstance, have that person write a letter on your behalf. Sometimes a letter from a doctor or a counselor is also appropriate when communicating details about an individual situation.
Updated 10 December 2007
