Should I put education before or after experience on my resume?

Put education first if you're a student or have fewer than two to three years of work experience — your degree is your primary qualification. Once you have substantial work history, move education below your experience section. The rule is simple: lead with your strongest credential.

How do I list a degree I'm still working on?

Write the degree and institution as you normally would, then add 'Expected [Month Year]' in place of a graduation date — for example, 'Expected May 2026.' This tells the recruiter you're on track to finish and gives them a concrete timeline without misrepresenting your credentials.

All guides

How to List Education on a Resume

5 min read · Updated September 11, 2026

Where you put your education section and what you include in it can quietly make or break your application. If you graduated within the last two years, education usually leads your resume; if you have three or more years of work experience, it moves below your experience section. Either way, the formatting needs to be clean, consistent, and free of the common mistakes — like listing a GPA that hurts more than it helps — that recruiters notice immediately.

What to Always Include

Every education entry needs four core pieces of information: the degree and major (e.g., Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering), the institution's full name, the city and state, and your graduation date or expected graduation date. That's the floor. Without all four, an applicant tracking system (ATS) may fail to parse your credential correctly, and a recruiter has to hunt for basic facts.

Write the degree out in full on the first pass — don't abbreviate B.S. or M.B.A. in the degree line itself, because ATS software sometimes misreads abbreviations. You can use the abbreviation parenthetically if you want: Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Mechanical Engineering.

Degree type and major: Bachelor of Arts in Psychology
Institution: University of Michigan
Location: Ann Arbor, MI
Date: May 2023 or Expected December 2025

Where to Place Your Education Section

Recent graduates and current students should place education directly after a summary or skills section — before work experience. Your degree is your strongest credential right now, so lead with it. Once you have two to three years of relevant work history, flip the order: experience first, education second.

There's one exception: if you're in a field where the degree is the credential — medicine, law, academia, licensed engineering — education stays near the top regardless of experience level, because employers are verifying the credential before reading anything else.

GPA: When to Include It and When to Drop It

Include your GPA only if it's 3.5 or higher and you graduated within the last three years. Below 3.5, omit it — listing a 3.1 signals to a recruiter that you thought a 3.1 was worth highlighting, which rarely works in your favor. If your major GPA is significantly higher than your overall GPA (e.g., 3.8 in major vs. 3.2 cumulative), you can list 'Major GPA: 3.8' — just label it clearly so it doesn't look like you're hiding something.

Format it simply on the same line as your degree or institution: University of Texas at Austin | GPA: 3.7. Don't put it on its own line — it doesn't warrant that much real estate.

Relevant Coursework, Honors, and Activities

Add relevant coursework only when you lack work experience that demonstrates a skill the job requires. If you're applying for a data analyst role and your only data experience is a regression analysis course, list it: Relevant Coursework: Statistical Methods, SQL for Business Analytics, Data Visualization. Limit this to four to six courses — more than that reads like padding.

Honors and awards belong here if they're academic and meaningful: Dean's List (3 semesters), Phi Beta Kappa, or a named scholarship. Extracurricular activities — clubs, sports, student government — are worth including only if you held a leadership role or if the activity directly relates to the job. 'Member, Chess Club' adds nothing; 'President, Finance Club — managed $12,000 annual budget' does.

Relevant Coursework: list 4–6 courses max, only when experience is thin
Honors: Dean's List, Latin honors (cum laude), named scholarships
Activities: include only if you led something or it's directly relevant
Certifications from your degree program go here, not in a separate section

Multiple Degrees and Incomplete Education

List degrees in reverse chronological order — most recent first. If you have a master's and a bachelor's, the master's goes on top. You don't need to list your high school diploma once you have a college degree, unless the job specifically asks for it (rare) or you're within one year of graduating high school.

If you attended college but didn't finish, don't hide it and don't lie. Write it honestly: 'Completed 90 credit hours toward a B.S. in Business Administration, University of Colorado Denver, 2019–2022.' That's far better than a gap that a background check will expose. If you're currently enrolled part-time, add 'Expected graduation: May 2026' so the recruiter understands the timeline.

Formatting Checklist Before You Submit

Consistency is the thing recruiters notice most in an education section. If you bold the institution name for one entry, bold it for all of them. If you use 'May 2023' for one date, don't switch to '05/2023' for another. Run through this checklist every time.

Degree spelled out in full, not abbreviated in the degree line
Institution name matches its official name (check the school's website)
City and state included — no ZIP code needed
Dates formatted consistently across all entries
GPA only listed if 3.5+ and within 3 years of graduation
No high school listed if you hold a college degree
Section header reads 'Education' — not 'Academic Background' or 'Schooling'

Build Your Resume

Resumade's resume builder automatically formats your education section to ATS standards, so your degree, dates, and GPA are parsed correctly every time.