My main EC has been model united nations and i was curious if any of the HYPS or other elite universities value it any more than others. In particular, does stanford care?
<p>I have never heard of MUN being valued over other EC’s (to be fair, not every high school offers MUN), but I’ll provide a list of some of the top college MUN programs:</p>
<p>Harvard
Penn
Yale
UChicago
Georgetown</p>
<p>Those schools have a lot of kids in MUN, creating a big enough program to staff a big high school conference, a college conference, and have a competitive traveling team - essentially the complete package. Harvard also hosts WorldMUN, which is like the college world championship. </p>
<p>These schools either may or may not offer the complete package, but are still respected programs:</p>
<p>UC Berkeley (best complete package among this list)
McGill
West Point (good traveling team)
Brown
Stanford
Virginia
William & Mary
UCLA
Duke
Michigan</p>
<p>… but good MUN programs aren’t just limited to the elites… Florida State (good traveling team), Georgia, George Washington, UC Irvine, Baylor, UC Davis, and several more. </p>
<p>From what I know, Columbia, Northwestern, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Princeton and a few others are either relatively small or relatively new. </p>
<p>Since you asked about Stanford, they travel and compete at the top college conferences, and they’re good at winning awards, but their team is small/medium compared to others. They also host a high school conference, but their attendance is nothing compared to UC Berkeley and UCLA’s high school conferences… or even some high school conferences hosted by other californian high schools.</p>
<p>You can interpret this information however you want, but I don’t think colleges value MUN over any other similar EC (i.e. mock trial, speech and debate, etc.)</p>
<p>Carleton College and William and Mary tied for the championship at Harvard’s MUN last year and both schools are VERY PROUD of that honor! Both schools made sure to list it in their viewbooks.</p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>UC Berkeley has one club for its team, and another club specifically working towards its high school conference, so I figure they’ve got a lot of MUN kids, so much so that it has to be distributed across two clubs.</p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>I forgot to mention Carleton. But with the exception of West Point, all the schools I listed in the first and second lists all host at least one conference. I don’t recall Carleton hosting a conference. I think hosting a (respectable-sized) conference is a testament to the strength of the program, because you need a (big) staff of qualified individuals to be able to do it. </p>
<p>ttgiang15,
can you clarify the UC Berkeley situation for me. From what I’ve heard, there’s a disjoint between the people who host the high school conference and the college conference. Although other colleges that host both a high school and college conference have different staffs for each one, everyone is usually still under the same umbrella organization, whatever that may be (i.e international relations club or whatever). But I’ve heard it’s different for Berkeley. More specifically, I heard those who run the college conference are the “rejects” who couldn’t make it onto the staff of their more prestigious high school conference and that the two staffs aren’t under a same umbrella organization.</p>
<p>depends how you do. … i for example have competed in the national ivy league conference hosted by upenn and received Outstanding Delegate so im sure that will be considered impressive to some extent.</p>
<p>Thanks for your input. Do you think colleges care if you one at THEIR high school conference?</p>
<p>yea thats wut im talking about… i won outstanding delegate at the ILMUNC Conference that is hosted by UPenn for high school students… There were thousands of students.</p>
<p>kfc4u,</p>
<p>sorry, I do not know the specifics- I will be an incoming freshmen next year. I roomed with someone who had just been elected as one of the primary board members during my stay, and from the brief talks it’s my understanding that his club solely works towards the high school conference. I have not even heard of the college conference (I guess, therefore, that makes it less prestigious) but I suspect it’s run by the other MUN club at Berkeley (we’ll call them Club B). But Club B actually does competitions and competes against other schools are various conferences, so I don’t think they’d be able to produce as good of a conference as Club A; I don’t think Club A members would like to comingle with Club B members anyhow, and would like to see their own members as the chairs and conference leaders as opposed to tapping into an associate organization. These are mainly large assumptions, but I think that’s how things go. <em>shrug</em></p>
<p>TTG</p>
<p>I don’t think colleges will give you an advantage in admissions just because you won an award at their conference. I don’t have any proof of this of course, or proof that college adcoms even take into consideration such detail while having to read through many specifics in many apps, but one could argue that it wouldn’t be fair that your school was able to attend a certain conference while other schools couldn’t. Also, there are many good conferences out there, why should a school weigh their conference’s awards over others of similar caliber (Harvard, NAIMUN/Georgetown, New York Nationals, etc.). Aren’t those kids who win awards elsewhere great candidates for admissions too? What about the kids who win awards at multiple conferences? </p>
<p>My point is that I highly doubt schools will give an advantage in admissions to someone who went to a certain conference (including their own), or even emphasize MUN over other EC’s. Heck, I doubt they will even look at such specifics as where you won awards and what award level you got when there’s only a limited amount of time and many more important aspects in your app to look at. </p>
<p>Perhaps the only thing that stands out is if you are Secretary General who has ran a good sized conference and have racked up multiple gavel awards. Running a good sized conference is not an easy leadership role, and of course, winning so many gavels confirms that you’re a great delegate. One example of this are the Secretaries General from Mission Viejo high school in california. Their SG’s are in charge of a big conference (>1000) and have won multiple gavels. The result? Their SG’s have gone onto schools such as Princeton, Harvard, and Yale.</p>
<p>I created a MUN in vancouver (<a href=“http://www.vmun.com%5B/url%5D”>www.vmun.com</a>) that had about 200 people last year. Will that help?</p>
<p>yes, but more than just putting it down on the app, it can also make for a great essay topic. nice website btw, looks very organized. i think the adcoms might be impressed by your leadership in creating a new conference.</p>