Do you need a "brag sheet?"

Brag Sheet. It’s a term I hear a lot in September and October, but only in those months. I learned the term in the context of college letters of recommendation, and that’s the only context I’ve ever heard it in. If you ask a teacher or counselor for a rec letter, they may ask you for a brag sheet. What does that mean?

Basically, a brag sheet is a resume, but less formal. (If they ask for a resume, give them a full and formal resume.) The teacher would like you to list your activities and accomplishments so they can have it in front of them when they’re writing your letter. Many teachers—especially those who teach 11th grade English and math classes—get a lot of letter requests. A brag sheet helps them stay focused and write a letter more quickly. That makes sense.

I encourage you to have a brag sheet ready in case a teacher or counselor asks for one, and I also encourage you not to give it to them unless they ask for it. The best recommendations are personal and talk about something beyond what a student has accomplished. They talk about the student’s character and, ideally, include examples of the recommender’s experience with the student. A brag sheet makes it very easy for a recommender to avoid that and instead write something much less personal that lists the student’s activities and accomplishments—things the student already lists in other places on their application.

When you first ask someone for a recommendation, do so in a way that prompts them to write about the more personal, character-driven letter you’re hoping for. Instead of

“Mr. Holloway, can you write me a letter of recommendation?”

try

“Mr. Holloway, I’m putting together my college applications, and I’m really trying to emphasize my creative problem solving. Would it be possible for you to write me a letter of recommendation? I was remembering the time in class when the computer crashed in the middle of my class presentation and I still found a way to get the information across without it.”

Make your request in writing, probably over email. If there’s something you want them to write about, let them know. Don’t just hope. You can’t control whether they actually write what you want, but you can ask.

But if someone does ask for a brag sheet, what should you do?

If you already have a resume, begin with that. You’ll want your brag sheet to be absolutely no more than one page, and you’ll want to tailor it to this teacher and this request. If you don’t already have a resume, you’re going to build up the brag sheet from scratch. Remember that it doesn’t need to be as formal as a resume. It isn’t for a wide audience; it’s for a specific person. Make it for that person.

At the top, include all your basic information. Name, grade, contact information. A teacher looking through a stack of papers on their desk (or stuffed into a bag or drawer) should be able to find yours quickly and easily. Put your name on the top, and make it big. If you’re sending your brag sheet over email, make it very clear in the email subject line what’s in the email. Something like “Brag sheet for _____’s rec letter due _____.”

Under that, include the three basic categories: education, experience, and accomplishments. But personalize that information for that person. Include your overall GPA, but also list what classes you took with that teacher—if it’s for a teacher—and the grades you got in those classes. (Because of privacy laws and data management, teachers rarely have access to student records from previous years.) List your activities and accomplishments that relate directly to that class and that teacher. List as many accomplishments, clubs, and activities you want, but make sure it doesn’t go over one page, and make sure the more directly related to that person, the higher up on the list.

Also include what you want your recommender to write about. If there are specific qualities you’re trying to get across in your application, like intellectual passion or creative problem solving, list those qualities near the top of your brag sheet. If there are specific stories or examples you want that person to write about, find a way to fit it into your brag sheet.

A teacher asking for a brag sheet is essentially asking you to help them make the letter-writing process easier for them. Be absolutely honest and accurate, and help them make it easier to write the letter you are hoping for, not just the letter they might write when they have time. You don’t want a generic form letter, so don’t give them a generic brag sheet. Make it specific, make it easy to read, and make it easy for the teacher or counselor to write you the best letter possible.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Read these related posts:

   How do I ask a teacher for a recommendation letter?

   How do I put together a resume?

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Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

Making a high school résumé

I’ve had resumes on my mind this week. I met with an executive recruiter and career coach who said that a huge part of her job is helping people make bad resumes good. I’ve also helped two clients, both high school juniors, improve their resumes in the past few days.

(Resume or résumé? I think that using the accents looks a little too formal and affected, but that going without the accents makes it too easy to read the word as the verb to resume, which interrupts the pace and understanding of your reading. I go back and forth, because neither seems “right” to me.)

So with résumés getting a lot of my attention, I’d like to re-run this post from a few years ago about putting together a good high school résumé for college application season. Leave a comment if you think I have a good piece of advice, got something wrong, or if you have an opinion on resume vs. résumé. Enjoy!

One of my Five Foundations of Applying with Sanity is to “be a person, not a résumé.” By that I mean to remember to think of yourself as an authentic person with complexity and contradictions, not just a list of achievements and statistics. That’s really important as a metaphor. But often you need a literal résumé. Scholarship applications may ask for a résumé. College applications sometimes (but not too often) ask for a résumé. Teachers and counselors may want a résumé to help them compose a recommendation letter. Potential employers very often ask for a résumé—that’s what résumés were created for. On top of that, it can be a useful exercise to go through and organize your thoughts about yourself and what you want to say about yourself. So with all that in mind, here are some things to consider when putting together, or revising, your résumé.

It’s strangely difficult to explain how to draft a résumé. The first thing I’d tell you to do is simply to do an image search for “resume samples” and notice the basic patterns. Résumés are just lists, but highly structured lists. The basic categories of things you would list are education, experience, and achievements. That’s where you begin your drafting, by listing the major facts of your education, like the high school(s) you’ve attended, your work experience, including volunteer work, and your awards and achievements. There are hundreds of guides and templates out there, but the best one I’ve come across recently is from the career center at Pomona College. It gives the basics, the reasoning for what goes there, and templates for different ways of organizing the résumé. I also recommend this video from a series produced by the Financial Times. (They’re British and use “CV” instead of “Resume,” but it’s the same thing.) Résumés are easier to revise than draft, so just get something written down, and then you can shape it from there.

There are also lots of fill-in-the-blank templates and résumé generators. Don’t use them. It’s important that you build your own from scratch, even if you’re looking at samples or templates as you do it. For one, you need to understand why you’re writing what you are, and why you’re placing it where you are. It’s easy to lose track of that when you’re just filling in information for a program to format for you. Revising and changing your résumé will be much easier and more intuitive if you make your own.

You’ll want to use a simple design. Keep it basic for your first résumé. Yes, there are some pretty good looking and clever templates out there to help you fit more information into the space or add photos or charts. But please understand that when most readers see this from a high school student, they’re not thinking “wow, this high school student made a really impressive design for their résumé!” They’re probably thinking “this kid expects me to believe they made this? They just used a fancy template. I wonder if they know how to make their own.”

Your résumé doesn’t need to have everything! It’s meant to begin a conversation, not be the conversation, so you want it to be concise and short. You’re trying to show off the things that speak to your finest abilities, and that’s different for everybody. Some students ask “should I have my GPA on my résumé?'“ If you’re proud of it, yes. Should you put your SAT or ACT scores on it? If you’re proud of them, sure. Should you list AP exams you’ve taken? If there’s more than one and you have room, absolutely. Should you list every class you’ve taken? No.

Similarly, you may decide not to list every tiny volunteer project you’ve ever done, especially if they were only a few hours total. If you house-sit for a number of families every year and it shows off your responsibility, then put it in the experience section. If you house-sat once for your aunt, there’s no need to put it on there. Everybody’s résumé will be different and list different things. There’s no precise formula. Make sure you’re listing, as concisely as possible, the broad outlines of your education, your experience in the world, and the achievements you’re proud of.

Two pages are fine if you need two pages. Many people will tell you that your résumé should never be more than a page, and they’re not completely wrong. Many readers—essentially the same ones who say a résumé should never be over a page—will not read past the first page. And if your résumé is over a page because you’ve failed to prioritize the important things or have weird formatting, then that’s a problem. But if you’ve got a reason to go onto the second page, it will be ok. Several studies have now shown that a second page doesn’t make you less likely to get hired. Watch out, though, for waste or sloppiness. If your résumé only goes a few lines into the second page, that looks odd. A second page should be at least half of the page. Otherwise, find ways to cut and condense.

But if it’s only a page, that’s great! Better, really. Don’t feel like you need two.

People tend to read résumés (and most things, on the page or on the screen) in an F pattern. They spend most of their time looking at the top, along the left margin, and at headings as they work down. Knowing this, make sure you put the most important section of your résumé at the top. Which section is going to be the most important for this particular audience? Put it first, even if your templates or examples don’t show it first.

Likewise, make sure the most important information in your lists is along the left. Say for example that you were on the swim team all four years of high school, and you were the team captain your senior year. If you write

2016-2020: high school swim team. 2020 team captain.

then you’ve got the least important information (dates) along the left margin and the most important part (captain, which demonstrates leadership and responsibility) all the way over to the right. Organize the section so that you can instead write

Captain, high school swim team, 2019. Team member 2015-2019.

There can be more than one version of your résumé. The information is going to be the same for all versions, but there are reasons to make changes. The most important thing for one audience may not be the most important thing for another audience. A résumé for a college may need to emphasize your academic credentials, so the education section will be at the top. But if you’re supplying a résumé to a teacher who is going to write a rec letter, then you may want to emphasize experiences that demonstrate your character. Besides, the teacher is already likely to know about your grades and obviously knows what school you attend. So for that version, the experience section will go higher and the education section will go lower.

I’d also advise using slightly different fonts for your résumé depending on whether or not you expect it to be read on a screen or on paper. Graphic designers and font nerds will debate these things for days and days, but for our purposes: san-serif fonts are generally more readable on a screen. However, even if they’re not less legible on paper, sans-serif fonts often look strange when printed, because we’re so used to seeing serif fonts used for printed materials. So consider making a sans-serif version for the screen and a serif version for printing. And please don’t use Times New Roman or Calibri—no matter how good they are, they’re associated with “default” and therefore “didn’t really bother.”

It has to be perfect. Not a single typo. As someone who is very successful told me once: “If you can’t make even one page perfect, when you’ve had lots of time to work on it and it’s all about you, then I don’t want to see you for an interview. You’re done.” She’s right. This one needs to be perfect.

Beware sending someone a résumé unless they ask for it. Remember that the point of your résumé is to provide a concise summary of your past four years. It’s meant to start a conversation or get someone to notice you. But if they’ve already noticed you or already started a conversation, then to hand them a résumé can be very limiting. It signals that you want to talk about what’s on the paper, when you have much more interesting things to talk about.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Check out these related Apply with Sanity posts:

   How do I prepare for a college interview?

   How do I handle supplemental questions?

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring.

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.