If you’re a student who is getting ready to start applying for University, or you’re a parent who wants to give your child every opportunity possible (which parent doesn’t?), we’re going to be going over a pretty interesting way to stand out from the crowd.
The Challenges Facing Students
Students face a number of challenges when preparing to apply for college or university. In additional to all of the typical struggles that teens encounter as part of growing up, it can be insanely competitive to get try to get into the school of your choice.
Even an above average student can have a difficult time standing out from the pack. A student can be at the top of their classroom, but what about when you zoom out and they’re competing with students across the city, the state, the country, and even from around the world?
Beyond that, there’s the whole money thing. School isn’t cheap, and even state schools can cost a pretty penny. That’s where scholarships come in.
But scholarships are also very competitive. There’s going to be a lot of students applying for the best scholarships, and even if you find some niche ones, you’ll still want to get every leg-up that you can.
First and foremost, the student needs to focus on their studies and ensure they meet the academic requirements.
Finding things to help your odds like a personal resume portfolio website can be a great way to break a tie, and even make up some additional ground, but it’s crucial to make the necessary academic strides, too.
You Need Every Advantage For Competitive Schools
Getting into a competitive school and earning scholarships requires you to go that extra mile. There are a lot of different ways to increase your chances of success, and we’re focusing on one of those in particular today: creating an online resume portfolio.
What is an Online Resume Portfolio?
An online resume portfolio is basically online destination where you can brag about your accomplishments all in one place. It’s your very own website, ideally with it’s own unique domain name (rather than something like wordpress.com/your-name, you’d go with yourname.com or yourname.me or the best available option).
You can include this website address on your applications, and it gives people an opportunity to see a bit more about you. You can include a portfolio of projects you’ve done, photos, videos, writings, and more.
It allows you to include things that wouldn’t fit or be suitable for a regular scholarship application or college application.
But if someone is looking at two applications, and they decide to visit your site – all else being equal – this gives you a big leg up.
How to Make an Online Resume Portfolio
The first two pieces of the puzzle are that you’ll a domain name, and a website hosting package. You’ll need to connect the domain with the hosting, and ideally you’ll setup an email address @yourdomain.
You’ll need to either find a template or build it from scratch, but first you’ll need to choose a platform to build your website on. You can learn HTML and CSS to make a very simpler site, but that doesn’t really make sense to do anymore, you’re better off using a CMS (content management system).
You’ll need to maintain your server, keep everything up to date to avoid any security issues, and so on, too.
But before you worry about maintaining the site, you need to build it first. We’re not going to go into all of the details there. Suffice to say, there are simpler ways to develop a website that might take you a couple of weeks to figure out, or there are much more complex ways, like building it from scratch, that can take a lot longer to learn.
Let’s assume you just want something that’s ready to go…
Student Success Shop is an alternative to building, hosting, registering – and all of the other stuff that’s involved in running – your own website. They make portfolio websites to help students gain every advantage possible when applying for post-secondary education.
They take care of everything, and you can even get them to do the data entry for you so that you can focus on your applications, your studies, your job, and everything else you would rather be doing.
They’re a family-based business who experienced first-hand the challenges of trying to stand out in the competitive world of education, and decided to create a solution that’s simple enough for anyone to use with tons of support to help you get started.
You’ll get your own custom email address which looks a lot more professional than using Gmail or Hotmail on applications. You’ll get your own website address. You’ll be able to customize your template, add any information you want, and Student Success Shop will take care of maintaining the site for you.
If you’re a student looking to gain the upper hand, or a parent, this is a service that’s very worthwhile to consider. They’ve got a trial so you can get a feel for it and see how it’ll look, and that’s worth trying out.
Click the image below to check them out and start your free trial.
Why is it worthwhile?
Like an investment, the goal is for it to pay off. Getting a great education is one of the best investments that you can possibly make. It leads to higher earnings throughout the rest of your career. Also, putting in the effort to increase your odds at scholarships is another very worthwhile investment in terms of the time it takes and the potential savings.
