17 Best Student Portfolio Examples of 2026

Are you searching for the best student portfolios and website examples because you’d like to build your own to stand out from the masses?

Here’s a little secret no one talks about: Having an online presence shows your professionalism and seriousness.

And what’s best, it doesn’t have to be the perfect website!

We’re talking about student portfolios, which are much more basic than the examples we added to our best portfolio websites collection.

However, these are the champions in this category (FYI: We had to review 95 of them to compile a list of the top 17).

Remember, for a small investment, you can create a similar—and a lot better — one with these portfolio WordPress themes. Or take things to the next level with a portfolio website builder.

Best Student Portfolios & Ideas

1. Kayla Padilla

Built with: Squarespace

Kayla Padilla’s student portfolio website is minimalist, with lots of white space that ensures a great reading experience. What’s remarkable is that Kayla has a slider featuring her favorite quotes instead of references and testimonials.

Moreover, the simple navigation bar takes you to the necessary information, social media, and contacts.

What stands out: Keep a minimalist website design to make your content stand out.

These ultimate Squarespace website examples will also offer an excellent creative exercise.

2. Kabel Mishka Ligot

Built with: Squarespace

Kabel Mishka Ligot is another excellent example of a simple yet clean website design. The transparent header disappears on scroll but reappears when you scroll back to the top, improving user experience.

What stands out: Use a disappearing or reappearing header to enhance your student website’s user experience (UX).

3. Devansh Gandhi

Built with: Squarespace

Devansh Gandhi creates an online presence with two pages and links to the resume, Twitter and Dribble.

His home page’s hero section has text on a solid background, followed by a few examples of his works.

What stands out: Keep your hero area image-free, using only a one-sentence bio (okay, two).

For more alternatives, check out our best resume website collection.

4. Brandon San

Built with: Weebly

Unlike Devansh, Brandon San uses a large hero image with a text overlay and a transparent header. The latter floats on the screen, so you don’t need to scroll back to get to the navigation bar.

Remember, this is a free Weebly website with a floating ad in the bottom left corner.

What stands out: Go more personally with your visitors by featuring an image of yourself above the fold.

5. Mingxi Wu

Built with: Squarespace

Mingxi Wu is a full-screen student portfolio website with an animated background, a text overlay, and links to works. However, you can also access the portfolio(s) from the menu. Likewise, you can check Mingxi’s LinkedIn profile through the link in the navigation bar.

What stands out: Use a single-sectioned home page with a full-screen background image, video (or even a slider).

You can create a similar website using any of our Squarespace portfolio templates.

6. Cristina Clerici

Built with: Squarespace

Cristina Clerici has a three-page student portfolio website, sectioned into home, research and contacts.

The home page starts with a short bio, a link to the CV, and an image. This site has a plain floating header but no footer.

What stands out: Create a page without a footer for a neater appearance.

7. Ashley Cortez

Built with: WordPress

Ashley Cortez is a free WordPress website with a minimalist vibe. It has an image, text in the hero image, and extra menu tabs below (in case you don’t access them in the main navigation bar).

The footer is just a simple “Thanks for visiting!” (which no one does!) and social media icons.

What stands out: You can still create a beautiful student website, even using a free platform.

8. Nathan Koch

Built with: Squarespace

What’s unique about Nathan Koch’s site is the very large white space patch above the fold with text at the bottom. It gives the website a cleaner look and emphasizes the text more.

The header and the footer maintain the same background color as the base to keep the minimalist design intact.

You’ll also find a timeline with work experience and a “get in touch” that’s impossible to miss.

What stands out: When done right, plenty of white space can work really well.

9. Kantwon

Built with: Squarespace

Even though Kantwon’s student website is simple, it has plenty of catchy details and elements that enhance the scrolling adventure. Hint: Kantwon uses a lot of emojis on his one-page website layout.

What stands out: We’re all used to expressing ourselves with emojis, so why not use them on your website, too?

10. Onyekachi Nwabueze

Built with: Webflow

Onyekachi Nwabueze has a very interactive website with a cool, welcoming animation above the fold.

This personal website has unique scrolling while maintaining a plain atmosphere (with large(er) images).

What stands out: If using only text in the hero section sounds boring, spice it up with a catchy animation.

11. Cydney Vicentina

Built with: Webflow

If Nathan Koch uses a lot of white space and little text above the fold, Cydney Vicentina uses a LARGE title and text that fills most of the screen. But the white space is still there to ensure great readability.

Moreover, the home page features multiple full-width sections that showcase works, with links to view projects in great detail.

What stands out: Use large sections with background images to boldly present your works and projects.

12. David Luong

Built with: Squarespace

David Luong is another great example of a dark website with a bio in the hero area, followed by a grid of past projects and involvements.

The sticky menu allows you to jump from page to page a lot easier, while the footer only has social media icons.

What stands out: Create a grid with links to more information about your works, projects and experiences.

13. Isabel Ngan

Built with: Webflow

Isabel Ngan knows how to lean towards minimalism with her responsive web design but also enriches it with creative touches.

Because this student website doesn’t have a floating header, the back-to-top button comes in handy.

We also like to see that the content loads while you scroll, which gives it a more pleasurable experience.

What stands out: Blending simplicity with creativity can make browsing your site more exciting.

14. Brittany Chiang

Built with: Custom

Brittany Chiang’s developer portfolio is legendary in the web dev community — the dark slate background with teal accents creates a sleek, terminal-inspired aesthetic. Her opening statement positions her as a frontend engineer specializing in accessibility at Klaviyo, with past experience at Apple and Upstatement.

The left sidebar anchors navigation (About, Experience, Projects) while the right panel scrolls through detailed content. Tech skill tags (JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Storybook) appear on each role, making it easy for recruiters to scan for relevant expertise.

What stands out: A dark theme with accent-colored tech skill tags is the gold standard for developer portfolios — it signals technical competence through design itself.

15. Sarah Dayan

Built with: Custom (Next.js)

Sarah Dayan’s portfolio combines professional credentials with open-source impact. As a Principal Software Engineer at Algolia, her site showcases her TypeScript projects (Dinero.js with 6,687 GitHub stars, Algolia Autocomplete with 5,253 stars) alongside blog posts and conference talks.

The dark minimal design with numbered navigation sections (Posts, Projects, Talks, Interviews) gives a structured yet personal feel. The split-layout hero with her latest blog post prominently featured shows she is actively contributing to the engineering community.

What stands out: Displaying GitHub star counts on open-source projects provides instant social proof of technical impact — more compelling than any self-written bio.

16. Jillian Hess

Built with: WordPress

Jillian Hess takes an artistic approach to academic portfolio design — a full-screen watercolor painting hero with her name in bold serif type creates an immediate connection to her work in literature and the visual arts. The CUNY Academic Commons integration signals her scholarly community.

The minimal navigation (About, Publications, Contact, Newsletter) focuses on what matters for an academic career. The artsy, gallery-like design sets her apart from typical academic websites that rely on plain text and institutional templates.

What stands out: Using original artwork as a hero image for an academic portfolio creates a memorable first impression that distinguishes you from cookie-cutter university pages.

17. Sean Halpin

Built with: Custom

Sean Halpin’s designer portfolio makes an immediate impact with a gradient hero and oversized typography: “Hi. I’m Seán. A Designer.” The warm pastel gradient (peach to mint) with decorative star elements creates a friendly, approachable vibe that stands out from typical dark-themed portfolios.

Below the hero, case study cards for Help Scout AI and Help Scout Articles showcase his product design work with colorful mockups. The navigation (Work, About, Play, Notes, Contact) suggests a well-rounded creative who values both professional output and personal exploration.

What stands out: A gradient hero with oversized type makes a bold personal statement — it works especially well for designers who want their portfolio itself to demonstrate their aesthetic sensibility.