Education Segment of the Resume

Education Segment
07/29/2009

Your education segment includes degrees and/or certifications most relevant to the position you seek. Most of you applying for internships or your first professional level job will begin with your education segment. This will be the first thing the reader will be looking for, and your relative lack of experience makes your education your most valuable asset.

If you're in college or graduating, you generally begin with your most recent college degree. Don't waste space telling the reader about your anticipated date of graduation. Don't do the following:

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Anticipated date of graduation May 2010

Unless you're reader is really stupid, s/he knows that 2010 is in the future. Instead, do this:

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, May 2010
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA

Also, don't forget to put the full name of the university (not everyone knows what LSU means) and the city and state.

You may include the names of other universities you've attended before receiving your degree only if you spent a significant amount of time there, or did something really interesting and relevant to the position you seek.

In general, don't worry about high school (who are you anyway, Al Bundy?) If you have more than two years of college under your belt, high school is irrelevant unless you did something in high school specifically related to the position you seek, or you did something really interesting in high school, something that makes you uniquely qualified for the position.

Other things to include in this segment:

GPA--indicate the scale, since not everyone has a 4.0 scale. You express your GPA and the scale as a fraction. For example, 3.5/4.0. Also, be sure to indicate if this is your major GPA or overall GPA. 3.5/4.0 major 3.2/4.0 overall.
Relevant course work. List courses by their official catalog description, not the course and number (which are meaningless to anyone outside of LSU). Don't list English 2002 or English 3002. Instead list Business Writing or Technical Writing..
Major projects or relevant courseware.

Also remember that college isn't the only place where you got an education. Do you have any special licenses (pilot's license, realtor's license) or certifications (Red Cross CPR certification)? If they're relevant, you may include them here. And if they're more important that your college degree, you might put them above your college degree.

If you have more than a bachelor's degree, then you usually put your highest college degree first, and list the others in descending order (Ph.D., master's degree, bachelor's degree). The exception to this rule is if one of your lower ranking degrees is more directly relevant to the position you seek. For example, if are applying for an upper level librarian position, and have both a Ph.D. in English and a Master's in Library and Information Science (MLIS), your MLIS degree would come before your Ph.D., since it is more directly relevant.