Should I use school specific resume styles?

[sanarteaga]

Hi there,

I am struggling to decide if I should draft my resume following the exact same guidelines MBA students at that school are given? (make it look as similar/identical to the resumes of current students, both in format, content and style).

What do you think? I think the pros is that it shows you know people within the school, or you have great interest in it and somehow you secured samples of student resumes. It also will look familiar to the people in admissions who surely know how a current student CV looks like.
Cons, I think you can look like you are overdoing... almost like a stalker, or that you are getting too much help from expert hands.

What is your take?

[CriticalSquareMBA]

Hi there,

The admissions department and the career services department are two distinct divisions. The MBA resume for a particular program is set by career services, not adcoms. Adcoms see thousands of different formats every year - it does you no good to have it in the school approved format. In all honesty, some school standard formats aren't that attractive.

You are better off keeping the format to whatever appealing format you generally use - if the school one looks better, use that but you are definitely at risk of looking like you're trying to hard.

I hope that helps,

Bhavik

[sanarteaga]

Thanks a ton!

[CriticalSquareMBA]

You are most welcome!