How to list education on your resume: 10 examples, and what a keyword matcher reads in each line

School, degree, date, honors: the format for every case (unfinished degree, GPA, Dean's List, cum laude, double major, GED, study abroad), plus 15 degree lines run through a real keyword matcher.

The education section is the part of a resume people write last and think about least. Three lines, copied from the diploma, done. Then the posting says "Bachelor's degree required", the screening software looks for those words, and the line reads "BSc Computer Science". To a human, same thing. To a matcher nobody taught the abbreviation, two different strings.

This guide covers the format for every situation we get asked about: still in high school, GED, degree in progress, degree never finished, GPA and honors, double major, study abroad, coursework, master's and PhD. It starts with something no other guide on this topic does: we ran 15 ways of writing a degree through the keyword matcher inside HiredFolio's ATS checker and recorded which ones it caught. The rest of the advice follows from that table.

What a keyword matcher sees in your degree line

HiredFolio's ATS checker scores a resume against a job posting, and 40% of that score is the keyword match. The match is literal. The text is lowercased, accents are folded, and each keyword from the posting has to appear as a whole word or phrase. The one piece of intelligence is a lexicon of alias groups: "Bachelor", "Bac+3" and "Licence" count as one group, "Master" and "Bac+5" as another, "PhD", "Doctorate" and "Doctorat" as a third. Anything not in a group has to be written exactly as the posting writes it.

We took the degree words a posting typically carries ("Bachelor's degree", "Bachelor", "Master's degree", "Master", "MBA", "PhD") and ran 15 education lines through that matcher. The full script and all 15 rows are in the pull request that shipped this article, so the run is repeatable.

Three things fall out of the table.

Abbreviations count only if someone taught the matcher. Our first run, in early October 2026, found nothing in BSc, B.S., MSc, M.S. or Ph.D. with periods, and "Master of Business Administration" matched "Master" but not "MBA". We added those forms to the alias groups on 5 October 2026, which gives the table above. Two gaps are deliberate. "BA" and "BS" on their own stay out, because BA is also a business analyst, so "BA (Hons) History" still matched nothing. And "MBA" alone does not satisfy a posting that asks for a master's degree. Most keyword-based screening works from a fixed list like this one: a string either appears or is on the list, or it does not count.

The possessive can matter. Before the same fix, "Bachelor of Science" satisfied a posting that says "Bachelor" but not one that says "Bachelor's degree". Ours now groups the two; a matcher without that group still keeps them apart. "Bachelor's degree in Computer Science" satisfies both in any of them.

Case can matter. The word "master" also means "to master a tool", so the lexicon only counts it when it is capitalized ("Master" or "MASTER"). A line typed in lowercase scored zero on a "Master" requirement. The same rule protects "BUT", "IT", "Excel" and a few other words that are also ordinary vocabulary.

The fix costs nothing. Write the degree the way the posting writes it, then add the other form once in parentheses:

B.S. (Bachelor of Science), Computer Science, University of Leeds, 2022

Master's degree (MSc), Data Science, University College London, 2024

The long form carries the "Bachelor" and "Master" aliases, the abbreviation covers a posting that asks for "BS" or "MSc", and a human reads either without slowing down. If you want to see which words a posting is going to look for before you write the line, paste it into our free keyword extractor: the degree requirement shows up under "Degrees, certifications and licences".

One honest caveat. This is how our matcher behaves, and we can show you the code. Other systems weight things differently. Ours reads "BSc" as "Bachelor" because we taught it to. No system infers that on its own, and you do not know which ones were taught.

The four things every education entry needs

Every guide agrees on the fields, so this stays short. Each entry has a degree with its field, a school with its city, a graduation date (month and year, or year alone), and nothing else by default. Most recent first.

Bachelor of Arts in Economics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
May 2023

Two rules on the date. If you graduated more than ten years ago, you can drop it: it adds nothing about your ability and invites age guesses. If you are still studying, write "Expected May 2027", never a bare future year that looks like a typo.

Two rules on the school. Spell the school's name as it appears on the diploma, because background checks match that string. Put the school on its own line or after the degree, but keep the same order in every entry.

Where the section goes, and whether the degree still matters

Students and graduates with under two years of work put education first, right after the summary. Everyone else puts it after experience, where it confirms a credential rather than carrying the application. A career changer whose new degree is the reason for the change can move it back up. Postings that require a specific credential, like a nursing license or a CPA, want it near the top so the screener finds it in the first pass.

Does the section still matter now that companies say they are dropping degree requirements? The data says the announcements ran ahead of the hiring. A Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School report from February 2024, "Skills-Based Hiring: The Long Road from Pronouncements to Practice", looked at postings and hires from 2014 to 2023. As HR Dive reported it, only 3.6% of roles dropped a degree requirement, and in those roles the share of hires without a bachelor's degree rose by about 3.5 percentage points. Across the economy that came to roughly 97,000 workers out of 77 million yearly hires, fewer than 1 in 700. The report sorted employers into three groups: 37% changed their hiring, 45% made the announcement and changed nothing, and 18% changed briefly and slid back.

So the line gets read, and it gets checked. Write it so it is found.

10 education section examples

Each example is one way of writing the entry that we would send as is. The rule that makes it work is under it.

1. Still in high school, or a high school diploma as your highest credential

High School Diploma, Lincoln High School, Portland, OR
Expected June 2027 · GPA 3.8 · Varsity soccer captain, school newspaper editor

High school belongs on the resume as long as it is your highest level of education. The day you enroll in a college program, it comes off, even if you have not graduated from that program yet. Students add what a diploma alone does not say: GPA if it is strong, and one or two activities that show responsibility. A "Relevant coursework" line (AP Statistics, Intro to Programming) is worth adding for a first internship and worth removing for anything after it.

2. A GED

GED (High School Equivalency Diploma), Texas Education Agency, 2021

List it in the education section like any credential, with the issuing body and the year. Write "GED" and the long form once, for the same reason as the degree abbreviations above. It needs no explanation and no apology; drop it once you hold a college degree or certificate, exactly as you would drop a diploma. If you took college courses afterwards without finishing, list those first (example 4) and keep the GED under them.

3. A degree in progress

Bachelor of Science in Nursing, University of Texas at Austin
Expected May 2027 · GPA 3.6 · Relevant coursework: Pharmacology, Adult Health Nursing

"Expected" plus the month and year is the whole trick. The screener reads the degree name, the human reads the date. Add the GPA if it is 3.5 or higher and two or three courses that map to the posting. Do not write "in progress" in parentheses, which reads as a hedge; the expected date already says it.

4. A degree you did not finish

Coursework toward a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, 2019 to 2021
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ · 72 credits completed · Coursework: Public Relations Writing, Media Law

Two years of study are two years of knowledge, and leaving them off creates a gap you will have to explain anyway. Name what you studied, the years, and the credits completed. Do not write the degree name alone as if you held it: screeners and background checks look for the conferral, and "Bachelor of Arts, 2021" with no degree conferred is the kind of claim that ends an offer. If the field has nothing to do with the job and you have years of experience since, you can leave the entry off entirely.

5. Writing the degree name correctly

Associate of Applied Science in Paralegal Studies, Austin Community College, 2020
Bachelor of Business Administration, Finance, Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY, 2023

Three conventions trip people up. First, the degree name is the one on the diploma: "Bachelor of Arts", not "Bachelors of Art". Second, it is "bachelor's degree" with an apostrophe when you use the generic phrase, and "Bachelor of Arts" with no apostrophe when you name the degree. Third, write the field after the degree, separated by "in" or a comma, so the matcher sees "Bachelor" and the human sees the major in the same glance. When the posting uses the generic phrase ("bachelor's degree required"), the table above shows that having that exact phrase somewhere on the page is what gets the match.

6. A double major, or a major and a minor

Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Political Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, 2024
Minor in Statistics

Two majors on one diploma go on one line, joined by "and", with the major that matters to the job first. Two separate degrees from the same school (a BA and a BS, say) get two lines, because they are two conferrals. A minor goes on its own line under the degree, or inside the same line after a comma. Nobody needs the word "double major"; the two fields say it.

7. GPA, Dean's List and Latin honors

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, May 2025
GPA 3.7 · Dean's List, 6 semesters · magna cum laude

The 3.5 threshold that every guide repeats is a fair line: below it, the number raises more questions than it answers. The more useful fact is how many employers look at all. In the National Association of Colleges and Employers' Job Outlook 2025 survey, 47% of responding employers said they would screen candidates by GPA, up from 37% and 38.3% in the two prior years. So for a graduate the number is read about half the time, and the right move is to show it when it helps and omit it when it does not, rather than to argue about whether it matters.

Dean's List is written with the count of semesters, because "Dean's List" alone could mean once. Latin honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude) go on the honors line under the degree, and only if the diploma carries them. Once you have three or more years of experience, the whole honors line comes off: the job you did since is the evidence.

One product detail worth knowing if you build your resume in HiredFolio. The grade field of an education entry is stored on its own and is not part of the text our ATS checker's keyword matcher reads when you scan a saved resume (the matcher reads the school, the field of study and the description). The GPA is for the human reader. That is fine: no posting asks for "3.7" as a keyword. If you upload a PDF instead, the checker reads the extracted text of the page, grade included.

8. Relevant coursework

Bachelor of Science in Marketing, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, Expected May 2026
Relevant coursework: Marketing Analytics, Consumer Behavior, SQL for Business, Digital Advertising

Coursework is for people whose experience section is thin: students, new graduates, and career changers whose new degree is the bridge. Pick three to five courses whose titles contain words from the posting, because that is what the line is for: "Marketing Analytics" puts "analytics" on the page. Use the catalog title, not the course code. Remove the line after your first full-time role in the field.

9. Study abroad or an exchange semester

Bachelor of Arts in International Relations, Boston University, Boston, MA, 2024
Exchange semester, Sciences Po Paris, France, Spring 2023 · Coursework taught in French · Capstone on EU trade policy

The exchange is a sub-line of the degree that awarded the credit, not a second degree, and it should not look like one. Name the host school, the country and the term. Then say what it proves: a language used for coursework, a project, a research topic. A semester abroad with no detail is a travel note. A full degree earned abroad is listed as any degree, with the country, and you can add the local name of the credential in parentheses if the posting might expect it.

10. Master's, PhD, and continuing education

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Chemistry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 2020
Dissertation: "Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 on copper nanostructures"

Master of Science in Data Science, University College London, UK, 2024
Bachelor of Science in Mathematics, University of Leeds, UK, 2022

Professional development: Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate, 2025 · AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, 2024

Graduate degrees go above the bachelor's, highest first. A PhD gets its dissertation title when you apply for research roles and loses it when you do not. Once you hold a master's, the bachelor's stays (it is a conferral and gets checked) but loses its GPA and honors. Certifications and courses go under a separate heading, "Certifications" or "Professional development", with the issuing body and year; the exception is a bootcamp or apprenticeship that is your main training for the job, which can sit in the education section.

Working in France or applying to a French company? The same degrees are read on a different ladder, Bac+3 and Bac+5, and the section is called "Formation". Our guide to the French CV format walks through the conversion.

Check the line before you send it

The table at the top of this article came out of the same code that scores your resume in HiredFolio's ATS checker. Paste a posting and upload or pick your resume, and the result lists each keyword from the posting as found or missing, the degree requirement among them. If the posting says "Bachelor's degree" and your education line says "BSc", the missing list will tell you, and the fix is the parenthesis from the first section.

Test your education line against a real posting. The scan is free and takes under a minute.

The same literal matching applies to every other line of the resume. If you want the general method, resume keywords by job counts what 93 postings asked for, and resume with no experience is the version of this advice for a first application, where education is the whole first page.

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