Graduating Model UN Club president Isabella D’Agostino ‘25, and vice president Valeria Buzzigoli ‘25 feel that this club prepared them for their college application process. “Model UN was my highest-placed extracurricular activity on my applications because of my leadership position,” said D’Agostino. “From this position I’ve learned a bunch of things, including communication, and how to articulate your ideas in the right way. So I used those skills to the colleges during the interviews.”
Buzzigoli had a similar experience in her college application process. “I think that Model UN definitely did play an important part in my application process because it really showed them that I am committed to this extracurricular activity and I have a leadership position in it, and I’ve learned a lot of things from it, like how to speak publicly, in addition to showing that you’re really committed outside of school academics,” she said.
D’Agostino shared that during her interview with Georgetown University, the interviewer had also been part of Model UN and Model Congress, so they were able to connect on a different level with her application for that school. Buzzigoli didn’t do interviews with any of the schools that she applied to, but she did use it in her application to the Senior Doctor’s Academy at UConn at the beginning of her senior year and mentioned Model UN, the benefits that she got from it, and what she contributed to the club. She was accepted into this program and thinks that it was definitely something that they looked at when they were reviewing her application.
D’Agostino will be majoring in political science on a pre-law track and will minor in public health and will be doing Model UN in college as well as a lot of clubs similar to that. Buzzigoli is also planning to do Model UN in college and loved the experience a lot in high school, so she is super excited to do it while she is in college. She wants to major in neurobiology and double major in nutritional sciences, so Model UN does not really tie in to her major but her passion for the United Nations is still really strong.
Model UN is something that D’Agostino has done all four years of high school. She was always interested in the UN and how the world functions on a political scale, so she thought the club would be really good to explore that, which helped with her college applications and her major. Buzzigoli has also always been interested in the UN. She lived in Italy and did middle school there along with preschool and part of elementary school, so she’s had experience with living in different countries and seeing how different they are on a political scale. She started doing Model UN as a sophomore and immediately loved it because she was able to go over the UN system and see all of the nations from a greater perspective and international affairs.
In terms of advice for next year’s Model UN officers/new members, D’Agostino said to make sure that you communicate with your officers because you cannot have a successful club if you do it by yourself and split the work. She also said that new members should use the resources that they have in the Google Classroom. Buzzigoli agreed and said that new members can sometimes be hesitant which can impact the amount of research that they do to prepare for both the New York City field trip and the UHart conference, and if they don’t feel prepared, they should definitely ask the leadership because it is their job to help anyone who needs it.
