<p>Hi! I'm a new member here and I just wanted to ask a few questions to other high schools about Key Club and Model UN. I'm only a freshman, but I was browsing through some 'chance me' threads and saw that many applicants were a part of Key Club or Model UN. My high school (large public) doesn't offer either of those, but I looked on the website and both of them look appealing to me, and I'd like to start either or both of them Junior year.</p>
<p>Do you guys enjoy Model UN/Key Club? How is it run at your school? Any specifics...? Thanks in advance</p>
<p>As a senior, I started Model UN at my school this year and it’s been a great experience. Even though it was a tad unorganized because none of us had really created something like it before, we got to go to Austin, Texas for the Central Texas Model United Nations conference and some of our members won awards! I think it’d be a really rewarding experience and being the founder of a club can’t hurt your application.</p>
<p>Key Club is great as long as you have hardworking members and officers, who look for events around the community. The key thing about Key Club is that its a way to gather a large group to volunteer at events, so that you have a greater impact.</p>
<p>I was in Key Club during junior year and I didn’t enjoy it. I liked volunteering and helping the community and whatnot, but most of the other members were only there because their friends were there. As a result, Key Club at my school is (was?) very cliquish, so there weren’t really any opportunities to meet new people. Additionally, the leaders did not actively search for volunteer activities – we had volunteer opportunities only once every two or three months (this is a bit strange considering the fact that we’re just outside of a large city). However, I’m sure that Key Club members at other schools have had much more positive experiences.</p>
<p>To my knowledge, my school doesn’t have Model UN, but it certainly sounds interesting and would probably have more dedicated members and leaders.</p>
<p>I’m currently a sophomore at a largeish, crappy public high school in MD. I joined Key Club my Fresh year because my Mom was in it when she was in high school and my close friend was joining it.</p>
<p>My freshman year, it was pretty pathetic. We did a total of 4 activities throughout the year, half of which the officers didn’t even attend. We have 7 people - 3 officers and 4 freshmen. I ran for President and my friend ran for Vice-President; no one else ran against us, so we both got what we wanted. The officers, of course, didn’t hand over control of the club until they graduated. Then the main sponsor retired and the co-sponsor moved to another state. So, the next year, we had a completely new sponsor and four people. It was supposed to be five, because we got another member at the end of the last year, but she didn’t show up to any of the meetings this year. </p>
<p>I had: no records, no advice, a new sponsor, useless officers (including my friend), and no experience running a club. Since then, I’ve managed to coordinate an event or two a month, and I’ve increased the number of people attending each meeting from 4 to 15. I’ve been nominated as the Distinguished President of the Capital District, which is all of MD, VA, and however you shorthand Delaware (DW?). I’ve focused on increasing the amount of opportunities; [un]fortunately, most of my members are also heavily involved in other activities, and are loathe to volunteer. I actually have set up a volunteer opportunity for tomorrow, and I have a lunch-making event planned for next next Monday. I’ve also made my sponsor (who was a typical first-year sponsor) contact a local Chick-Fil-A and see if we can set up some sort of fundraiser after school every year; hopefully, by the end of the year, we’ll have enough money in our treasury to have a Key Club field trip.</p>
<p>Everyone will have different opinions. Don’t try and ask for opinions on how their Key Club was, unless you are planning to optimize the way you run your club. You get what you put into it, especially if you are running it. Each person’s club is run differently, each district has a different Lieutenant Governor that may or may not be willing to help you, each club’s officers are different. Oh - I’ve done so well that my club’s sponsor has made an executive decision to not let anyone run against me for President for the rest of my High School career/life/whatever it is.</p>
<p>Model UN is run by my school’s GT, which is a school organization created for the “gifted and talented”. (In reality, this organization is actually a class period as well, so maybe 30-40% of the really intelligent students are part of it because the rest have other classes they want to take) What bugs me is that Model UN is limited ONLY to these GT kids, so only the 20-30 kids per grade are eligible to even participate in it. So out of the 2400+ student body, only 80 or so are allowed to even sign up for upcoming competitions.</p>
<p>Which is COMPLETE BS. Especially because I don’t think I should have to sacrifice my music periods just to join Model UN. I really wanted to join, too.</p>
<p>Key Club is run pretty much like a general club. ids show, 70% of them doing so for college, less than half contribute a significant amount to the club.</p>
<p>our MUN goes to one major conference a year [or that’s the way it’s been since I’ve been here]. This year it was NHSMUN [new york], next year I think it’s in Ontario. </p>
<p>It’s pretty decent- our teacher will only accept a certain number of people, and it’s up to him who goes [new students almost never go]. It’s a club, so all the work is done out of class, and we just practice some speaking at meetings. He’s a fantastic teacher, but he’s kind of a wing-it person, so we were a lot less prepared than other groups. We did win a couple of awards.</p>
<p>Hey all, thanks for all the feedback. I genuinely appreciate it!</p>
<p>@quomodo:
Well technically I could, but I feel like it wouldn’t be as successful or popular. Don’t get me wrong- I’m popular at school and well liked, but I just feel like less people would join or take it seriously, as opposed to having an upperclassman found the club instead of an underclassman. Dunno, what do you guys think?</p>
<p>The Key Club at my school is a joke. It’s run by some of the “pretty” girls and is cliquish, as treefingers has stated. They do very generic community service (i.e. sending goods to soldiers, canned food drives), but it’s rather useless considering that we have about 4 clubs that do the same thing. Most of the girls (yes girls, there are about 3 guys in the club’s entirety) just join to pretty up their resumes. Basically, they join, they get the shirt, they show it off, and then don’t attend a meeting until the next year for another shirt. Needless to say, I didn’t appreciate the half-assed way the girls and adviser were running the club and stopped coming to meetings.</p>
<p>Model UN is a completely different story. There aren’t a lot of members, but the ones we do have are generally the top ranked kids in school. We supplement our spots with our adviser’s honors kids. Model UN is really fun and very different. Although we don’t do as well as the private schools in our conferences, I know a lot of people genuinely love the experience. You may get less members than Key Club, and some people may not be willing to go through all the work of creating resolutions, but you’re more than likely to have a club with some very dedicated members.</p>
<p>I am in both at my school (I am a freshman) and agreeing with the other posters, MUN is a more valuable experience than Key Club. If you were debating on which one to found, I would say Model UN. Even though it’s more time consuming, it’s worth it!</p>
its fun if u like helping ppl or meeting new people</p>