Best Delegate will be launching its free eBook next Monday: How Model UN Can Help You Get into College. We’ll also be answering your questions on college admissions! Email your questions to us at ryan@bestdelegate.com!
Conference Previews
This weekend is one of the Top 10 Weekends of the Model UN season with twelve conferences taking place across North America. Best Delegate previewed the Northeast and college conferences earlier this week. Today, Best Delegate will take a look at the two premier high school conferences on the West Coast – UCLA’s BruinMUN and Stanford’s SMUNC. Also, Best Delegate will be liveblogging at BruinMUN this weekend! We love to meet our readers. Come find us to get featured!
University of California, Los Angeles’ BruinMUN
BruinMUN is held on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles and is considered to be one of the largest and most prestigious conferences on the high school circuit. The conference features 17 traditional UN committees with double delegations in each committee (besides the cabinets). NATO, the IMF, and the Human Rights Council being new to the conference lineup this year and the joint crisis cabinets will be between North Korea and South Korea which should make for some fun crises. The conference is led by Jennifer Patton who is in her second year serving as Secretary-General.
We saw many of the traditional Californian powerhouses — Mira Costa, Huntington Beach, Cerritos, Santa Margarita, Tustin, and Mission Viejo — win Best Delegation awards at the Edison High School Model United Nations Conference (EHSMUN) last month. How will their varsity teams stack up against each other at UCLA? And will another team steal the show?
*Liveblog Alert* – Best Delegate‘s Parsa Sobhani will be liveblogging the conference this weekend! Parsa is excited to be back at his alma mater and visit a conference that he was Secretary-General of for two years.
Stanford Model United Nations Conference (SMUNC)
Northern California upstarts Gunn High School and California High School just went head-to-head at the Contra Costa County Model United Nations Conference last weekend and will be back in action along with high schools from throughout California. Who will come out on top this time?
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Best Delegate will be previewing the Southern showdown conferences tomorrow: William & Mary’s WMHSMUN, the SUSMUN conference in Atlanta, Georgia State’s GSUMUN, and Centreville High School’s CENMUN.
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Tip of the Day
Every conference has different philosophies, judging styles, and values in its awards criteria. Someone who is a Best Delegate understands that not winning awards is not necessary due to the bias of the chair but more likely because their performance did not match the chair’s philosophy of judging and values. Therefore, Best Delegates understand the need to research their conference.
Using UCLA is an example, here is the BruinMUN conference philosophy. Delegates should also be aware that BruinMUN uses a modified scoring method instead of holistic judging in determining awards.
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We want to hear from the Californian powerhouse rivals. Let us know if you’re attending BruinMUN or SMUNC in the comments!
