Crafting a Standout Brag Sheet for College Applications

High school is a whirlwind of academic work and extracurricular activities. College admission boards want to see students shine, and keeping track of all your brag-worthy accomplishments will pay off in the end. A brag sheet is a powerful tool to showcase your achievements and skills, providing a comprehensive overview of your high school career.

What is a Brag Sheet?

A brag sheet is similar to a student resume, highlighting your accomplishments, key experiences, leadership skills, and employment throughout your secondary education. Essentially, it’s a quick reference guide with all the details and achievements for someone trying to get to know you better.

Purposes of a Brag Sheet

Your brag sheet can be used for many purposes:

Letter of Recommendation Guide

Share your brag sheet with your public high school teachers, coaches, or any other adults from whom you are asking for letters of recommendation. Though a teacher may have you in class, they may only know some of the clubs and activities you participate in, both in and outside your school district. The brag sheet will help them easily reference your accomplishments, activities, and skills should they need help. Remember, many of these adults have hundreds of students to keep track of, so it’s difficult to reference each student’s accomplishments without help. Making it easier for them to do so will help them write a letter of recommendation effortlessly, which certainly works in your favor.

College Application Supplement

Including your brag sheet with your college applications can also give college admissions officers more insight into who you are outside your student role. While having an excellent GPA and high test scores is terrific, colleges also want to see students who give back to the community and are active beyond traditional academics. You may also want to keep your brag sheet handy when, or if you decide to complete the Common Application. Note that application portals often limit the number of extracurriculars you can include, so your brag sheet may have more activities than you can include on your applications. That's totally okay-your brag sheet is meant to be a comprehensive record of your high school accomplishments.

Read also: Creating a Strong Student Resume

Tool for Scholarship Applications

Use your brag sheet to help you reference the activities and projects you have been involved in. This will also serve as a writing prompt for any scholarship applications that require an essay.

What to Include in Your Brag Sheet

A brag sheet doesn't need to look like a typical resume. It should include your grade point average (GPA) and any test scores (such as the PSAT, SAT, and ACT). But remember, the main highlight of your brag sheet is to showcase your high school career and personal accomplishments. Starting from ninth grade, include all your experiences. Ideally, you would have been keeping track of all your time in any extracurricular activity, sport, club, travel, or volunteer service, as well as any awards, leadership positions, etc. If you have not been keeping track, you should start building your brag sheet (you’ll be grateful you had come your senior spring semester).

At the top of your brag sheet, include your name, address, and contact information.

Consider organizing your brag sheet into sections that correlate to a standard resume, except the focus is on academics and extracurricular activities as opposed to work experiences. Here's a basic breakdown:

Personal Information

Your full name, grade, current school, contact information, and a very brief bio.

Academic Achievements

List and describe your academic successes. This could include your GPA, honor roll, advanced coursework (AP, IB, honors classes), awards in academic competitions, recognitions received, etc.

Extracurriculars

Detail your involvement in clubs, sports, community service, summer programs, leadership roles, etc. Use the 4 Tiers of Extracurriculars to help prioritize your activities (Tier 1 being the most prestigious). Include depth and breadth of involvement, as well as your specific contributions. A good example entry for extracurriculars might look like this: "Varsity Debater, School Debate Club (11th and 12th Grade) - Led my school's team in multiple regional and state-level competitions, successfully placed in the top 3 in four meets."

Community Service

Highlight your service activities. This could involve long-term volunteering at a local organization, single occasion volunteering events, or any community service project that you've led or participated in.

Work Experience

If you've had any jobs, internships, or work-based learning experiences, note down your roles, responsibilities, and any quantifiable achievements.

Skills and Interests

This is where you can showcase your unique talents, hobbies, or skills. They can give more context about your passions and personality.

Question-and-Answer Format

Some brag sheets include a question-and-answer format, which is your option. Some students answer questions but only include them when giving their brag sheet to individuals writing letters of recommendation, not to potential colleges. You'll have to figure out the best option for you. Here are some example questions:

What would you consider your most outstanding academic and personal accomplishment thus far?
Talk about an event or happening in your life that significantly impacted you. How did it affect your life, both personally and academically?
Describe yourself using only five positive adjectives.
What do you consider your three greatest academic strengths and weaknesses? Please briefly explain your answers.
What do you consider your three greatest personal strengths and weaknesses? Please briefly explain your answers.
Are there any factors or circumstances in your life related to your grades or admission test scores that you would like colleges to be aware of?
Are you excited to explore a particular academic area in college? If yes, which area of study and why?
Are you interested in a particular profession? Why?
Briefly introduce yourself to your future college roommate.

Tips for Creating a Strong Brag Sheet

Be Specific: Provide concrete examples to support your claims. Colleges read many recommendation letters each year, and after the first thousand or so letters extolling "smart, hard-working, kind" students, they all start to run together. Your letters need to have specific examples to make them stand out, and by including examples in your brag sheet, you make it as easy as possible for your letter writer to include some of their examples in their letter. So mention specific grades you got, projects you worked hard on, times you came to them for advice, times you helped classmates, etc.
Highlight Your Wins: When listing items like jobs, volunteer work, and community service, include your supervisor’s name and number with the description. This way, colleges can verify your experiences. Listing all you’ve accomplished can seem uncomfortable, but they are your WINS! Remember, this is called a brag sheet for a reason. While you should be honest (some schools do verify these), you should not be overly humble - it’s time to highlight your triumphs!
Show Your Character: Focus on how you show your most important qualities. Are you caring? empathetic? bold? curious? Tell them what you've done. "When it came time to join a group for physics experiments I chose to work with students who needed my help rather than one with my friends." In one example you've shown your character and telling them that you were captain of a team that any college will see on your extracurricular activities list.
Be Concise: As with college essays, keep your brag sheet as clear and concise as possible. Anyone who reads your brag sheet will read many student documents. For enhanced readability, you can use bullet points instead of long paragraphs and keep your brag sheet to one page. Teachers and counselors often write dozens of letters of recommendation every year, so they won't have time to read through brag sheets that are the size of a novel. Aim to keep your brag sheet no longer than a page or two. Making your answers clear and concise is the best way to ensure your recommender reads all the information and gets your main points. Their own letter won't be longer than a page, so don't overwhelm them with a super-detailed brag sheet.
Be Honest: While you should be honest (some schools do verify these), you should not be overly humble - it’s time to highlight your triumphs!
Show Growth: Some students feel like they need to come off as perfect in their brag sheet, but no one expects that. In fact, discussing a struggle you had can be a great way to show your strengths since colleges love to read about students who persevere in the face of a challenge. So it's OK to mention that your C in freshman math led you to revamp your study routine and become more open to asking for help, or that getting cut from the school soccer team led you to take a volunteer coaching job that showed you how much you love teaching kids.
Tailor Your Brag Sheet: If you're asking three people to write you letters of recommendation, expect to have three versions of your brag sheet. The majority of the information can stay the same, but you'll want to tweak each letter so it explains why you're asking that specific person to write you a letter and gives specific examples related to them (such as grades they gave you or projects you worked on in their class). You might want to customize or update your brag sheet depending on who you're giving it to. For math or science recommenders, highlight your STEM activities; for humanities recommenders, focus on your humanities-oriented accomplishments.
Explain Your Interests: Let your counselor know your goals and focus so they can write their letters with them in mind. Your counselor might see STEM classes but how you use your love of STEM is more important. "I'm applying to programs that specifically focus on both the art and technology behind set design. My career goal is to interface between the set designers and architects for stage productions, films and themed entertainment. I served in this role in the production of Seussical when I designed a rotating stage."
Keep it Updated: Be sure to update your brag sheet each semester.

Brag Sheet Example

Here is an example of a brag sheet:

Name: [Your Name]

GPA: [Your GPA]

Test Scores: [Your PSAT, SAT, and ACT scores]

Contact Information: [Your Address, Phone Number, Email Address]

Letter Writer: Mr./Ms. [Teacher's Name]

Classes with Letter Writer: [List the classes you took with this teacher]

Schools to Submit Letters To: [List the schools you want them to submit letters to]

Deadlines: [List the deadlines for each school]

Why I am Asking You: It was while taking your Honors Biology class freshman year that I began to really get excited about science and seriously consider going into medicine as a career. You made the topics we studied so interesting, and I would even read textbook chapters we weren't assigned just to learn more. After I did poorly on my first midterm in Honors Biology, you really encouraged me and gave me tips on how to start studying earlier to be better prepared for tests. This really helped, and it was the main reason I was able to raise my grade to a B+ that semester, and get an A the next semester. You also always emphasized how important it is to help others, and that's why I started an informal AP Bio study group before every test. Multiple students have told me that these study sessions have helped them be more prepared, and their grades have gone up.

Personal Strengths: I think my greatest strength is my strong desire to help people. Seeing people I've helped succeed makes me feel happier than when I succeed alone. For that reason, I always try to assist people who need it. This might mean making dinner for the family when my parents have to stay late at work, staying after school to help a classmate with homework, or printing out guides to help people at the senior home I volunteer at navigate their smartphones. To be a great doctor though, you need to have a very strong understanding of medical concepts, and my strong work ethic helps me with that. As long as I can see the goal I'm aiming towards, I don't mind putting a lot of time and effort working towards it.

Activities: Lifeguard at [Pool Name]. Always showed up for work on time, was fully responsible for keeping up to 6 children at a time safe in the water, and helped students build their swimming confidence and move to the upper levels of the swimming program.

Future Plans: My dream is to become a rural health doctor and improve the health of people who don't have regular or easy access to healthcare. I've started working towards that goal by taking a lot of math and science classes in high school and working hard to get good grades in them, as well as volunteering at a nursing home so I get more experience helping people. In college, I plan on majoring in human biology and continuing to pursue more volunteer opportunities, hopefully at a hospital.

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