Why the structure is what it is
This resume leads with education, not experience. For a student resume that is almost always the correct choice: the reader wants to know where you are studying, what you are studying, and how well you are doing. The internship and the personal project follow, because they are the two pieces of evidence that the candidate can apply what they have learned.
Education comes first, then experience, then projects, then skills. This is a variant of the standard early-career order. It differs from the previous example (software engineer) in that the education section is at the top rather than below experience.
Making education carry weight
The education entry is not just a degree and a school. It includes a GPA, a one-line summary of relevant coursework, and a note about academic standing. This is the difference between a resume that reads as "I went to a university" and one that reads as "I studied the right things and did well".
The GPA is on the resume because it is strong. This is a deliberate choice. If the GPA were lower, the correct move would be to leave it off — the absence of a number is not a signal, and a mediocre number is.
Why the personal project matters
The personal project — a course-planning web app used by 340 students during the spring term — is the strongest item on the resume. It shows that the candidate can build something from scratch, ship it, and see it used. It also gives the reader a concrete metric to remember.
The project description names the technologies (implied by the app being a "web app" and the skills section listing React and Node), names the user population, and describes a specific piece of technical work (the ranking algorithm for course sequencing). Two bullets, one page, and the project has more weight than the internship that precedes it.
The internship bullet points
Two bullets, not five. Both are outcome-focused: one describes an internal tool with a measurable effect (onboarding time reduced from two days to two hours), and one describes a test coverage improvement (61% to 88%). Neither is a list of responsibilities.
Students often struggle with internship bullets because the internship was short and the work felt small. The trick is to describe the effect of the work, not the work itself. "Wrote integration tests" is a task. "Raised coverage on that module from 61% to 88%" is a change.