I reside in India and am planning to attend the Singapore Model UN at the high school level. How much would it help me in getting accepted by the top American universities like the Ivy Leagues, MIT etc as a transfer applicant as a Computer Science student? Is SMUN going to be worth the effort? And since I would be attending MUN in a foreign country, would it be considered to be more important than attending MUN in my own country?
That on its own is not going to get you into any college. If you are only doing it for that reason, you might want to reconsider. Getting into a top U.S. college is going to be dependent on the whole package, especially as an international student. You will need very high grades and very high test scores. You need to be exceptional in some way. What makes you stand out from all the other international students with high grades and high test scores? You need great letters of recommendation from your teachers. Your essays need to show who you are.
You know that the rejection rates at the top US colleges are in the region of 90% and higher. What is going to keep you out of the rejection pile? That’s what your focus should be. If you love MUN and want to go as far as you can with it, it is an excellent EC, but it won’t get you into a top college without everything else being there too.
To answer your question, it is not more impressive to attend MUN in Singapore versus in your own country. It just means you have the money to do so, and collleges are not usually impressed with money. Unless you donate tens of millions, of course.
I will definitely take care of the essays and my grades.
I do have a lot of other extracurricular activities, but nothing extraordinary. That’s why I was planning to attend an MUN.
And I belong to a middle class family, so Its not like I have a lot of money to spend on such things.But I thought that attending an MUN in a foreign country would considered to be a bigger achievement.
So considering all these things, should I really attend the SMUN or attend one in my own country or simply drop the plan?
Reread my response.
Everything that @lindagaf says is valid. As an EC, it’s a good EC, but will not be what makes or breaks a college application.
I think I’ll go for it.
And could you please help me with one more thing? Does the MUN conference that you attend make a difference or is it just MUN that matters? Like HMUN is considered to be the best. So would attending the HMUN be considered as a greater achievement than attending any other conference?
if you do not win it will not matter much. Winning at HMUN is better than winning at others, but simply attending HMUN won’t do anything
Why are you going through all this effort just for one extra EC that won’t make that much of a difference to your app? It doesn’t even sound like you’re interested in MUNing. I think you should do it only if you’re interested
It’s YOUR (or your team’s) achievement that matters.
Put it this way. I could go to McD’s for a burger, or I could get the GlamBurger for $1738. But the burger that wins, in the eyes of a college admissions officer, is the burger that I make at home, and I am so good at making it now that my neighbors ask me to make them one because they know how much I love to make it. See?
To be honest, I am not that interested in MUNs. Actually I had read about a lot of people who got into the top American universities or the top universities in UK and had participated in MUN. So I thought it is considered to be a really good achievement.
I can literally do anything to get into a top university in USA like MIT or the Ivies. But now I think MUN won’t be that helpful.
Is there anything else that I could do?
@Rimjhimgolf Don’t do things to get in. Do things for yourself, apply, and hope for the best.
Yes, do as well as you can, go as far as you can with MUN in your country. Or go as far as you can with volunteering at the local soup kitchen, or tutoring kids, or cleaning up the local playground, or whatever it may be, for free. It’s the quality and the effort that count. Going toSingapore is not going to help.
It’s not money. It’s your interests and how well you develop them.
MUN is NOT AT ALL necessary to gain admission into a top US college.
I am an international student. I know where you’re coming from, because I was asking myself this very same question a year ago. A lot of international students do MUN all over the world; I’m korean, and literally more than half of my friends aiming for US colleges scrambled around to do MUN because they thought it would make their application glow or something.
However, I ultimately decided not to do it because of several reasons. One is that I honestly am not interested in Model UN, and it didn’t sound fun to me at all; I would only be doing it to add to my resume. Another reason was that since every other international student seemed to do MUN, I felt like I wanted to differentiate my application from the Standard Asian Application™ (you know, the chess club, orchestra, math club, AV club, MUN, and Mock Trial kid). I focused on extracurriculars I was actually interested in. I did theatre for four years and got leading roles and officer positions in clubs. I did internships that interested me, etc. etc. I didn’t win the nobel prize or invent a nuclear reactor or anything. But I got into my dream school, and some of my other international student asian friends who never did MUN just got into Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT, and freaking Oxford.
Don’t force yourself to do MUN. You’ll be fine and it’s a waste of money to go to another country just to afd a mediocre, uninteresting EC to your list.
It’s one thing to win a national MUN competition and get invited to an international event. Quite another to just pay to attend one in a foreign country. You need to think about what you’re asking. It isn’t a tip just to go, they look for the record. If you want to transfer to any top college that takes a very small number of applicants, an even smaller number of internationals, you need to be on the ball with your understanding and expectations.
Please read the above posts from @lindagaf and @koreanstudent. MUN is not worth the trouble.
MUN is good resume filler. But otherwise, not a huge deal unless you stick with it all the way to college and then decide to go into policy/politics.
From my personal experience, I’m an intetnational student who got into the University of Chicago without ever doing MUN. With so many people doing MUN, I doubt it’ll be enough to differentiate you from other applicants.
I personally have no interest in MUN.And now I know going to Singapore for something that I have no interest in would be really stupid. Thanks everyone for helping me with this.
Actually i am a musician and a Computer Science student. And I would love to do something in these two fields because Comp Sci and Music are my passion. But I don’t really find any opportunities in these two fields. Or maybe I just don’t know what to do.
I am basically planning to do two years of Computer Science engineering here in India and then apply as a transfer applicant. What can I do in these two fields i.e. music and Computer Science ? I also write poems by the way.
Do you write your own songs? Nowadays it’s pretty easy to release your own music, isn’t it? Teach young kids in your neighborhood for free. Go to an old peoples home and play music for them. Make an app for music so that little kids can learn for free (probably already something like that.) Record yourself playing, post it on YouTube, hope it gets lots of views. Google music and computer science competitions and enter them. Give a free concert, post a notice at your local library or whatever, record the concert, post that on YouTube. Get together with some friends and play music together. Find some friends who dance, ask them to dance to your music, record that. Win-win.
I just thought of all that right now. You can keep on thinking outside the box. Good luck.