Best Delegate is not given to the most talented person in the room. It is given to the most prepared. The good news: preparation is reproducible. Here is the path that has worked for our award-winning delegates, in the order it works.
- Map the four chair-rubric categories — substance, diplomacy, writing, leadership — and self-score.
- Recognise the seven silent award-killers and stop doing them.
- Execute a 60-day prep plan that ends in a finals-week checklist.
- Run a useful post-conference reflection that compounds across conferences.
What chairs actually score
Almost every chair scores on a private rubric, and almost every rubric weighs four things. They are weighted differently at different conferences, but you'll see this combination almost everywhere.
Substance (~30%)
Depth and accuracy of country knowledge, command of the topic, ability to handle questions. This is the foundation. Without substance, the rest of the score doesn't open up.
Diplomacy (~25%)
How you treat the room. Calibration of language. Whether you escalate or de-escalate. Whether other delegates want to work with you. The score most beginners underweight.
Writing (~25%)
Position paper quality, working paper authorship, clauses you wrote that survived to the final resolution. Often invisible to other delegates but very visible to chairs.
Leadership (~20%)
How often other delegates turned to you. Whether you ran a working group. Whether your name appears as sponsor on multiple drafts. The score most beginners overestimate is "speaking time"; what chairs actually score is closer to "influence."
The hidden modifier
On top of the four categories, almost every chair has an implicit modifier: did you make the committee better? Helping struggling delegates, mediating between blocs, accepting friendly amendments instead of fighting them — these multiply your underlying score.
The silent mistakes that kill awards
1. Off-policy positions
Saying things your country would never say in real life. Chairs check. The fastest way to lose credibility is to argue France into supporting a binding emissions cap on developed economies it spent the last decade resisting.
2. Speaking without listening
Repeating your GSL in moderated caucus. Repeating your moderated caucus in the next moderated caucus. The chair has heard your position three times by hour four; if your speeches don't evolve, neither does your score.
3. Neglecting writing
Many strong speakers leave drafting to others. Then the resolution that passes is full of clauses they had no hand in. The award-eligible delegate has authored at least three operative clauses by voting bloc.
4. Becoming the antagonist
The delegate who fights every amendment, blocks every consensus, and turns caucus into a war. Chairs notice this within an hour. Delegates notice within thirty minutes. Awards never go here.
5. Performing for the chair
The delegate who looks at the chair while speaking, sits in the front row, and references the chair's name. Chairs find this transparent and slightly embarrassing. Speak to the room.
6. Disappearing in unmod
The delegate who is brilliant in moderated caucus and ghostly in unmoderated. Awards are decided in unmod. If you cannot do unmod, you cannot win.
7. Forgetting the chair is a person
Brief courtesies — thanking chairs after sessions, asking thoughtful questions during socials, treating the dais staff as colleagues — register. Not because chairs are scoring social interaction (they aren't) but because the kind of delegate who does these things consistently is the kind whose committee work also runs cleanly.
The 60-day prep plan
Days 60–45 — Foundation
- Read the conference background guide twice. Once for breadth, once for depth.
- Identify the two or three sub-topics within the topic that will dominate debate.
- Read three past Best Position Papers from similar conferences. Note the structural moves, not the content.
- Read the most recent UN report on the topic.
Days 45–30 — Country research
- Find your country's voting record on the topic across the last five UN resolutions.
- Read your country's most recent General Debate statement to the General Assembly.
- Find one major recent statement from the foreign ministry or head of state.
- Identify your country's natural bloc — Annex I, G77, P5, BRICS, EU, AU, ASEAN, OIC, NAM — and the implications.
Days 30–15 — Drafting
- Write a first draft of your position paper.
- Have someone — chair, mentor, peer — review it. Revise.
- Pre-draft three operative clauses you intend to push in committee.
- Identify three to five red lines — clauses your country cannot accept under any circumstances.
Days 15–7 — Speaking and procedure
- Drill 60-second speeches every other day. Record. Watch back.
- Re-read the conference's rules of procedure. Twice.
- Map your bloc — who else is likely in it, what their priorities are, where you might disagree.
- Prepare one "reactive" speech — a speech you can adapt to whatever direction debate takes on day one.
The final week
- Print everything. Position paper, operative drafts, key statistics, voting record. Wifi fails in committee rooms.
- Pack a writing kit. Two pens. Notebook. Highlighters. Sticky notes. Laptop charger.
- Sleep. Two days of consecutive 7+ hour sleep before the conference matters more than two more hours of research.
- Have one strong opening line memorised. The first sentence of your first GSL. Memorised, not improvised.
- Walk the room. If you can scout the conference venue the day before, do.
Day of: hour by hour
Morning of day 1
Eat. Hydrate. Arrive 30 minutes early. Sit in the centre of the chamber, not the wings. Introduce yourself to the three delegates closest to you before the chair begins.
First GSL speech
Take it. Don't wait to see how others speak. The earlier in the GSL you speak, the more delegates approach you in the first unmoderated caucus.
First unmod
Identify the four delegates speaking with depth. Approach them. Be specific about which clauses you want to draft together.
End of day 1
You should have: an outlined working paper, a bloc of five to eight delegates, two clauses you have agreed to draft personally, and notes on every delegate who spoke.
Day 2
The drafting day. Working papers consolidate into draft resolutions. Volunteer to write at least one clause. Run a small working group on a contested sub-topic. Approach delegates outside your bloc — bridge-builders win on day two.
Day 3
The voting day. Whip count. Friendly amendments. Quiet, deliberate work. By the time voting bloc opens, your job is to have already won. Speaking less on day three — having already done the work — is often the strongest signal.
After the gavel
Whether you won an award or not, the post-conference reflection is where most of the long-term value lives. Within 48 hours, write down: three things that worked, three things that didn't, one thing you would do differently. Save it. Re-read before your next conference.
The delegates who become consistent award winners are not the most talented — they are the ones who run this loop after every committee. Two years of disciplined post-conference reflection beats five years of natural ability.
One last thing
If you don't win an award at your first conference — or your fifth — you have not failed. The gavel is a signal, not a verdict. The skills you build in committee compound for the rest of your life, and they do that whether or not your name is read out at closing ceremony.
Practice what you've learned.
This module is the integration. The exercises are not new skills — they are the disciplined application of the skills the rest of the program has built.
- The rubric self-score. Score yourself out of 10 on each of the four categories — substance, diplomacy, writing, leadership — for your last committee. Be honest. Show it to a chair if you can.
- Mistakes audit. Of the seven silent award-killers, identify the two you are most prone to. For each, plan one specific countermeasure you will deploy at your next conference.
- The 60-day plan. Build a personal version of the 60-day plan with real calendar dates from today. Block the first week's research time on your calendar this evening.
- Reflection journal. Within 48 hours of your next committee, write three things that worked, three that didn't, and one thing you would do differently. Save it and re-read before your next conference.
- The honest comparison. Compare a publicly available Best Position Paper from a major conference with your last position paper. List three concrete things their paper does that yours does not. Plan to do all three next time.
