Letters of recommendation are one of the most underrated and important components of a successful college application because it helps differentiate students from everyone else who has good grades, good test scores, and ample participation in Model UN. Top students know they need solid letters of recommendation from their teachers in order to get into top colleges.
Here’s the problem: teachers do not have enough observation opportunities during Model UN conferences to be able to write richly detailed letters of recommendation. Usually they only catch snippets of students lobbying or negotiating in a crowd when they walk into the committee room, and if they are lucky they get to see their student make one speech all weekend.
Here’s the opportunity: Be a Model UN Club Officer. Teachers respect club officers. Why? Because club officers are the best educators — they demonstrate leadership and bring out the best in the rest of the club’s students. And club officers provide the most valuable thing possible for a teacher — they save them time by doing all the things needed to run a club that the teacher doesn’t have time to do! Lastly, they actually get to observe club officers in action because their efforts take place in their classroom after school!
Here are some opportunities to demonstrate leadership depending on where you are in your Model UN journey:
You’re an incoming Model UN Student Officer already
Great! What type of legacy are you going to leave? In other words, what difference will you have made so that next year’s student officers are set up with an even better club? This could be increasing club membership and culture through better recruitment and retention strategies. This could be selecting more challenging conferences to attend and implementing a training plan to prepare for them. Or this could be starting your own mock conference for novice delegates at your school or middle school students in your district.
Make some goals that you and your fellow club officers want to achieve this year, set up a plan of action items to do, and then execute through regular meetings. Learn some of the best practices and case studies for student officers at the Model UN Institute Secretary-General program.
You want to become a Model UN Student Officer
What are the most important things that the club needs to improve on? You have to identify those areas of weaknesses in your club and come up with ways to improve them. This could be helping your team prepare for MUN conferences by running practice simulations, doing trainings on public speaking, or giving feedback to each other’s position papers. This could be mentoring newer delegates. Demonstrating proactive leadership is what makes the advisors and fellow members more confident that you are ready to become a club officer next year.
Share the experiences you have gained as a delegate or resources and research you have compiled over time. Learn from the Model UN Institute’s Ambassador program (advanced delegate skills) or Crisis program (crisis simulation skills) so that you can go back and teach those to your delegates.
You want to start a Model UN Club at Your School
This is perhaps the most difficult but most rewarding opportunity available! Starting a Model UN club is a lot of work but presents a lot of sustained opportunities for leadership — moments that will make great stories for letters of recommendation and the personal essay.
There are a lot of basic things to figure out at this stage, and trial and error is normal. The most important is just making sure that students “get” Model UN and love doing it so that the new club is sustainable. Pick a novice conference to go to, get everyone to sign up for it, and then focus all your training preparing for it. That will get all the new members on the same journey and rowing the same boat.
The fundamentals of Model UN can be learned at the Model UN Institute’s Diplomat program (for high school) or Junior Diplomat program (for middle school).
