<p>Our school doesn't have Model UN but I have always wanted to do it for years. I was wondering if I were to establish a club, what it would be like. Can anyone tell me what exactly it is like and whether or not it is hard, time consuming ect. ect.</p>
<p>I think it depends on your goals and ambitions. Our school's club is known for excellence and puttign very little effort in. They meet every week for about two hours. They meet weekends half the time to fudnrasie, go to workshops, conferences, etc. I'd say a good 4-6 hours per week min</p>
<p>Our school has MUN club, but we meet only about 2hrs/week...we really have no fundraising, if someone wants to go to a MUN trip they have to pay it themselves ( which most people can, so its not really an issue). Iguess it can be hard depending on the amount of effor you wish to put into it, sur eyour club can get by with the minimun work, maybe meeting once a month, but it really won't be that much fun.</p>
<p>Our MUN has 1 conference we go to. We spend a total of 5 minutes talking to the director to figure out what country we'll be on and the issues.</p>
<p>Yet someone/country still usually owns at the conference. Thank you Northern Minnesota.</p>
<p>lindsey831- if you do establish the club you guys should go to HMUN, its pretty cool, especially if you can get the smaller councils</p>
<p>I was in MUN throughout high school. </p>
<p>How much effort you put in depends on what you want to do. Local conference? You maybe need a meeting a month and then one every week in the month before the conference. Registering your delegation might take a lot of time or a little depending on its size... my school sends around 50 delegates to our local MUN and it's a lot of paperwork!</p>
<p>International? Across the country? I've done both, and they take way more preparation. Of course, our teacher sponsor organized the hotels/tours/transportation, but if you do that it is going to take a lot of time (not to mention the paperwork with the school board!). But if you are looking for a symposium to go to, I would start with SSUNS. It was the first MUN I went to and it was amazing. It's held every november in Montreal (and there are a lot of american schools). Check it out: <a href="http://www.ssuns.org%5B/url%5D">www.ssuns.org</a> </p>
<p>My school also had a class for MUN. We met every Monday after school for three hours, and submitted our weekly assignments to the teacher via email. This was all in preparation for our big trips (to Montreal and Paris). It was well worth it. </p>
<p>Another thing you could do is make your club a regular school club, where you meet every week at lunch and discuss politics, international issues, parliamentary procedure, etc. </p>
<p>Good luck... MUN rules!</p>
<p>I love Model UN! lol im such a nerd.</p>
<p>Well our school usually does excellent every year. We meet for about an hour each week. We do 2 weekend conferences (at Brown and UMass) and there are 2 day conferences (BC High and Concord Academy). They give us a questionaire asking us what committee/country we want..and we "try out" by doing a short speech on a random topic. Then they assign us our country and committee. We usually have to research and write a positon paper that we submit (for eligibility for awards). </p>
<p>We have to pay about $50-$70 for the conferences. We wear Western business attire. The conferences themselves are really fun and you get to debate the topics/simulate the UN(i.e. represent your countries' views). At the end of the conferences you usually get to goof around and we do superlatives, etc. Then at closing ceremony they give out awards like Best Delegate,etc. </p>
<p>So basically it doesnt take up a lot of time you just have to be willing to give up a weekend to attend the conference. </p>
<p>You should DEFINITELY get a Model UN at your school! I think you'll like it.</p>
<p>haha at some of the conferences our shcool attends, one is allowed to wear either western business attire or clothing traditional to the country</p>
<p>My school doesn't have Model UN, but I'm hoping I will be able to start one. It seems really fun.</p>
<p>Yep! I've been in the MUN at our school since sophomore year, and it's been quite a fun experience. We go to only one conference a year, and that's always fun-- this year's conference was in S.Korea and the hosts there organized group trips to the DMZ for us. It was great.
MUN at our schools starts about two weeks into the school year, once every week for thirty minutes at lunch. The first five weeks are weeding out noncommittants (because there is always a huge show at the start of the year), the next two are spent writing an essay on a topic covering a current world issue (my topic this year was to cover the war over the Gaza strip and its history), and the next week is spent delivering these essays to a panel of judges who determine who will be on the school's MUN team. All-in-all, there are ten members on our MUN team, including one journalist (other schools bring other journalists, in addition to NGO reps and photographers).
The rest of the time up until the actual conference (which isn't until Feb/March) is spent in hour long meetings after school, writing up position papers and researching the MUN conference topics and our country's position on it.</p>
<p>The school covers our plane tickets, so all-in-all, including fees for the conference, hotels, and food, I ended up spending $200 in the span of five days (which is how long our conferences last).
All we ever wear are buisiness suits. And you'll be cited if your outfit is too revealing, not-buisiness-like, has some piece of jewelry deemed too gaudy, and if your hair is not up (this one is really retarded, but eh, just shows how strict some conferences are). </p>
<p>Yep, hope that was a bit hopeful. And MUN is something definately worth all the time-- not only do you get to meet people from other schools and make great friendships (I keep in touch with a lot of my MUN buddies), but you get a crash course on international relations, which is especially handy in our time.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any information on how to start a Model UN team and what the best conferences in the US to attend are? I'm trying to start a MUN team at my school and I need all the help I can get.</p>
<p>Ugh. My school is so unsupportive of extracurricular activities. We have to pay $300-400 for 4-day conferences we get to by bus.</p>
<p>^ dude...we have to pay for all our extracurricular trips...the school doesn't help at all. For HMUN each person going from my school has to pay like $2000, with absolutely no school help... which sucks cause a lot of other people from our club might like to go but they jsut can't afford it.</p>
<p>I was an officer for MUN, and I have to say... it'll take alot more work than starting something like... Chinese Club.</p>
<p>You'll have to educated members in the protocol, rules, debating...</p>
<p>Organizing everything for the conferences.... Hotels, transportation, looking after members, etc...</p>
<p>...and fundraising, etc.</p>
<p>But it's totally worth it - good luck. :3 Its alot of fun.</p>
<p>all we have to pay is like $60 for conferences.</p>
<p>But for our club, we had to pay hotel fees, transportation, not to mention researching them.</p>
<p>megaman123 - why would a conference cost $2000/person? $300-400 covers conference fees, hotels, and transporation. OH is that it? Do you guys fly to Harvard? The farthest we go is Virginia or Boston (from New Jersey, only 5-6 hours or so), so we always go by bus.</p>
<p>As other posters have already said, Model UN can be pretty expensive, and at most schools students have to pay their entire way if you don't do ALOT of fundraising. </p>
<p>Anyway, when I first entered high school we didn't have a Model UN, but at the end of my freshmen year we founded it and it officially became a club by my sophomore year, and I've been President ever since (three years and running), so perhaps I could give a bit of advice. </p>
<p>You're really, really going to need to find a very dedicated adviser who would be willing to do this. If you're just a regular delegate it doesn't take up too much time, but if you're the adviser or president of a new club, there's a ton you have to do, and it only seems like more work if you're unfamiliar with it. Having said that, I've had to work with several secretary-generals at a few different conferences, and they've all been so tremendously helpful and very nice.</p>
<p>I would suggest having meetings twice a week after school, but once a week could suffice. However, last year I frequently found myself in our adviser's room in the morning (and during class, even) discussing the agenda, conference reservations and information, country assignments, and almost everything else under the sun, so if you're going to actually be heading up your own club, it's going to take ALOT of work on your part individually to get it up and running.</p>
<p>I would also suggest starting out at smaller conferences (Harvard may be fun, but if you're not experienced at all, big conferences can be extremely intimidating). Plus, if they're nearby and you don't have to stay at a hotel, it's ALOT cheaper. We attend to conferences a year (one two-day one that we commute to, and one four-day one in the city that's much larger and that we have to stay at), and the smaller one tends to be about $20/delegate, but the larger one can be close to $200/delegate, so it all depends on your finances and who's willing to pay alot of money.</p>
<p>And I would also strongly, strongly suggest running simulations before hand. There's nothing worse than going to a conference unprepared and having no idea what you're doing and then end up fading into the background. Me, I started off at my very first conference on Historical Security Council at a very large conference, and frankly, the experience of the hot-shot delegates from the fancy private and rich public schools scared me stiff. But luckily you learn alot from them and perhaps they're the reason, the next time around, I ended up Most Outstanding Delegate for representing the USSR on HSC.</p>
<p>Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, MUN is NOT about the awards. I cannot stress that enough. It takes the fun out of it.</p>
<p>Model UN has been so fun and has undoubtedly been the best thing I've done in HS. I'm sure, if you do it, you'll love it.</p>
<p>So in Model UN, who gets stuck with being N. Korea?</p>
<p>I'm kinda lost here, is Model UN a thing where people pretend they are delegates to the UN? Like role playing or something????</p>