How do I go about explaining huge gaps in a CV for Spring & Summers?
I was at uni for undergrad last year (2022/23) but decided to drop out at the beginning of 2nd year due to a whole host of reasons. I am set on going to a decent semi target for economics in September this year and so have begun focusing on how to prepare for spring weeks and eventually summer internships.
For a quick timeline, after secondary school, I was at uni between Sep 22 to Aug 23. After that I had a job between Oct 23 to Dec 23, went travelling for a few months until Mar 24. I struggled to find a job for a bit but finally got one starting in Apr 24 and will continue having that until Sep 24.
I don’t really want to include my previous uni on my CV as I did pretty horribly and I feel that would seriously tank any chance I had. But obviously that would leave a huge hole in a CV that would be pretty difficult to explain away.
So I really have two questions I guess. Firstly would having dropped out from uni previously (with poor grades) sink my application? Secondly, if I chose to not include it, would it be possible to explain it away?
Keep the first uni out. For each item on resume, only include start date and duration.
Yeah I figure keeping the first uni out is probably the move that makes the most sense. What do you mean by including only the duration, the typical format for dates I see is on all the templates here is Month A - Month B. Would it be formatted Month A (3 months) or something like that? Also how would that 9 month gap of my first uni be explained away, surely someone looking at a CV could figure it out?
Correct re Month A (3 months) structure, with the duration either on the same line or the line below. You can explain the 9 month gap if asked (doubt it) by saying you were doing a gap year and traveling although I wouldn't explicitly put that 9mo gap on the CV.
Just make sure your answer to "Walk me through your CV" is clean and doesn't raise questions.
I would just put Class of 2026 or whatever for uni and don't put any gaps or a first school on there. It's uni, no one really knows or cares about the timeline. Zero reason to bring it up on the resume in in answers.
Since I’m starting Sep 2024, wouldn’t I be class of 2027 not 2026? Also if I apply to spring weeks with a 2026 graduation year, I would be ineligible since that would suggest I’m a 2nd year.
I definitely won’t be putting my first uni on there but obviously it still leaves a big gap. Since I completed secondary school and got my A Levels in August 2022. I have some work experience from October 2023 onwards but that leaves a gap from August 2022 to October 2023 (since Aug 22 - Sep 23 was when I was at uni).
Agreed with others - start “fresh” and pretend you’re enrolling for the first time and when you graduate just put “class of X” or if you’re in new school for 3 years, just those three years so it looks like you graduated early.
Ageism is a real thing and you actually get the benefit of competing against and looking like fresh 18 year olds with the wisdom of a 19-20 year old (huge changes - I always felt kids who started university at 20 were so far ahead and more mature and excelled and anecdotally I only started picking my shit up in 2nd / 3rd year uni).
From the comments here starting ‘fresh’ seems to be the move. How would that make it look like I graduated early, as surely I would just put Class of 2027.
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