This is a fair point, and what I meant was something more along the lines of "It's certainly true that my school did not emphasize résumé-padding or even resume

This is a fair point, and what I meant was something more along the lines of "It's certainly true that my school did not emphasize résumé-padding or even resume building". No one at my school ever discussed career development, and it was a fundamental disservice to the students. The assumption on the part of the faculty was that students would go to 1 of 3 mediocre grad programs or low tier medical programs that our students were regularly admitted to, and that furthering students' development outside of undergrad was not their concern. The only reason I ended up in a better place was because of fantastic mentoring outside of school. To put this into context, I majored in biochemistry in undergrad, and was the only person in my department (or out of anyone else that I knew in STEM) to do summer research internships at other universities (we didn't have such a thing) / in industry while I was there. I was also the only person to push for a more independent senior research thesis rather than a cookie cutter project which was handed to me. The university I performed research at for two summers had large, well organized career counseling and job placement efforts, including multiple large scale career fairs each year. When I returned to my school and suggested that we organize a trip to a large university career fair nearby, I was met with blank stares by the faculty and the students. When I asked people what their career plans were soon after the start of senior year, no one even had a general sense of what they wanted to do or what opportunities were out there...