How Model UN awards work: the categories, the judging and how to earn one

Your chairs take notes in every session, weigh them against the conference's criteria on the last day and announce the awards at the closing ceremony.

Awards follow four steps:

• Before the conference. The conference sets its award names and how many each committee may give, and some give none at all. Read its awards policy before the first session.
• In every session. Your chairs note what each delegation does, and others can help decide.
• On the last day. They weigh six kinds of evidence, from speeches to drafting, and settle the list.
• At the ceremony and after. The awards are read out, and an award can follow you onto your MUN CV.

Can you win at your first conference? At conferences that record awards on mymun, about one first-timer in ten wins. To be one of them, follow the habits that earn an award, starting with one moment in each session that a chair can write down.

If you chair, use the judging rubric and the bias checks. If you lead a school team, read delegation awards and what to tell your students.

Most conferences give a top delegate award and an honourable mention; the rungs between and below, and their names, vary.

From the top, the usual order is the top delegate award, Outstanding Delegate, Honourable Mention and Verbal Commendation. Paper and speaker awards sit beside it.

A common ladder in India runs: top delegate award, High Commendation, Special Mention, Verbal Mention. So similar names can sit two rungs apart: High Commendation is second there, while a Verbal Commendation elsewhere is fourth.

If your conference publishes no list, ask the secretariat. Or watch the ceremony: at many conferences, the top award is the last name read for each committee.

Usually your committee's chairs, often checked by the secretariat; at some conferences, the delegates vote.

At most conferences, your chairs on the dais decide the awards for your committee. Like a chair at the UN, they stay neutral: they judge how well you represent your country, not whether they agree. Others can take part:

• The secretariat. It sets how many awards each committee may give and checks every list, so an honourable mention means the same in every room.
• Crisis staff. In a crisis committee, the backroom tells the chairs what your directives achieved. Speeches alone rarely win a crisis award.
• Paper readers. The chairs or a separate team judge the best position paper from the papers alone.
• Delegates. At some conferences, delegates vote. At National Model United Nations (NMUN), a university conference in the US, each committee votes for its own individual awards.

At THIMUN-style conferences that give awards, there are no caucuses, so the student officers judge your lobbying and your debate on each resolution.

Six kinds of evidence, from speeches to the position paper; how much each counts depends on the committee.

Good chairs judge what they saw and wrote down, not their impression. Published criteria come down to six kinds of evidence:

• Speeches and points. Whether each speech moved debate on: a clear position, one proposal and an answer to the arguments against it. Chairs remember a speech by what the room did next.
• Caucus leadership. Who brings countries together in the unmoderated caucus or in lobbying, and reaches delegations outside their bloc.
• Drafting. Whose words end up in the resolution, or in a crisis committee, whose directives work. Writing paragraphs of the draft counts for more than signing it.
• Diplomacy. Compromise that keeps your country's line, respect for every delegation and room for quieter delegates.
• Position paper and research. Accurate facts, your country's real record and a paper handed in on time.
• Rules. Motions and points used correctly, at the right moment, to help the committee.

Drafting and diplomacy matter in every committee, because that is how agreement works. A winning proposal meets other delegations' concerns as well as your own, so that a large majority can support it.

For chairs: set your weights before the first session, keep an evidence log and rank each day on your own.

Delegates: this is how a careful dais scores you. Chairs: decide your criteria and weights before the first session, and tell the committee in your opening remarks. These three steps keep the decision fair.

1. Set your weights

The weights follow the committee: in a General Assembly committee of up to a hundred delegates, leading a bloc stands out. The Security Council has only 15 members, so everyone speaks, and negotiating with the five that hold a veto matters more. In a crisis committee, directives carry the room's work, so they weigh the heaviest.

2. Keep an evidence log

Write a line when something happens, not at the end of the day: the day, the stage of debate, the delegation and what changed. While one chair runs procedure, the other keeps the log, and you swap after each break.

MUN Command is the best tool for the speech side of this log. It keeps the full history of the debate: who spoke, when and in which caucus. Rate and comment on each speech as it happens, and its statistics are ready when you pick awards.

If a delegation has no lines by the second day, watch it in the next session. Good work in a quiet delegation is the easiest to miss.

3. Rank each day, alone

Compare sheets at the end of each day, and where you disagree by more than one place, read both logs. With no quota from the secretariat, follow the usual pattern. Committees that record awards here most often have three up to about 35 delegates, and five in larger ones.

For chairs: the biases that skew awards, and when to tell a delegate what is costing them.

Judge the work, not where a delegation sits, how fluent its English is or whose friend it is.

Check for bias

Say it at the first break

If something is costing a delegate an award, say so at the first break, in one sentence about the behaviour. For example: “Your speeches are strong, but you have not worked with anyone outside your bloc yet.” Waiting until the ceremony leaves them no way to fix it.

Prepare well, draft and negotiate in every session, and avoid what costs awards: dominating, breaking policy and copied or AI-written work.

You cannot choose who else is in your committee, but you can choose the evidence your chairs see:

• Hand in a strong paper on time. At some conferences, only delegates with a position paper can win.
• Answer the background guide's questions. Your chairs wrote the guide (some conferences call it a study guide), so a draft that answers its questions shows you did the reading.
• Speak early, then speak when you add something. Give a clear opening speech in the first session, and after that speak only with a new point. Keep to your time, and look at the room, not at your paper.
• Build on others' ideas. Name other delegates' ideas when you build on them; chairs notice who listens.
• Write the paragraphs nobody wants. Funding, monitoring and deadlines, written as strong operative paragraphs.
• Bring others in. Ask a quiet delegation for its view, and offer it a paragraph to put its name to.
• Keep your country's line. Find where your country can compromise without giving up what matters to it, and offer that.
• Stay strong to the end. A commendation can come from one good hour. Anything higher needs every session, including the last one.

What costs awards

• Dominating. Talking over delegates, taking the keyboard and refusing others' wording, or splitting a bloc to lead your own. Chairs see it in the caucus, and many rule a delegate out for it.
• Breaking policy. Speaking or voting against your country's record to win allies. The simulation stops working, and chairs mark it down.
• Plagiarism and AI-written work. A copied paper can disqualify you, and at some conferences a delegate who uses generative AI for the paper is not considered for awards. Many conferences also ban resolution text written before the conference.
• Motions for show. Five motions with no purpose tell the chairs you are not listening. One well-timed motion does more.
• Courting the chairs. Flattering notes or asking mid-session how to win. Ask for feedback in a break instead.

Not every conference thinks so: some give no awards at all, others reward only diplomacy, and both choices have good reasons.

THIMUN in The Hague gives no awards, because it holds that competition works against cooperative problem solving. Others, such as WFUNA's Global Model UN, give Diplomacy Awards that put negotiation first.

The debate comes down to three positions:

• For awards. They reward preparation, give delegates a goal and show a university what a student did. Chairs who judge with care also give useful feedback.
• Against awards. Delegates chase the floor instead of agreement, loud voices beat quiet work, and no judging is free of bias. At the UN, nobody wins a resolution.
• In between. Diplomacy awards, peer votes, delegation awards or written feedback for everyone keep the motivation without the race.

For you, the question is practical, so read the awards policy before you apply. A conference without awards is a calm first step, and one that rewards diplomacy suits the habits that earn an award.

Organizing a conference? Decide early and say it in your invitation, so delegates know what they are working for before they arrive.

Some conferences reward a whole school or university team, either from its members' awards or by judging the team as a whole.

A delegation award goes to a whole school or university team, and few conferences on mymun record one. Many add up the individual awards the team's delegates won; others judge the team as a whole.

At NMUN, for example, the secretariat judges each delegation on staying in character, taking part and using the rules correctly. Every committee counts the same.

If you lead a team as head delegate or faculty advisor, ask which method your conference uses before you place students. When every committee counts the same, put a well-prepared delegate in every room rather than your strongest few in one.

A missed award is one room's ranking; on a CV, the context and the work matter more than the title.

Most delegates go home without one: at conferences that record awards on mymun, about one in seven wins. A missed award is one dais's ranking of one room. Ask your chairs for one thing to improve, and make it your goal at your next conference.

When organizers record your award on mymun, it appears on your MUN CV, next to the committee and your role. The organizers reviewing your next application can open that CV, so the award speaks for you there.

On a CV or a university application, an award says little by itself, because a reader sees the title, not the room. Add the committee's size and what you did, and let them judge:

If you lead a delegation

• Before the conference, set every student a goal that does not depend on an award, such as one amendment or one speech in each session.
• Tell them which awards the conference gives and how chairs judge, so nobody is surprised at the ceremony.
• After the ceremony, ask each student for the one thing their chairs told them to improve.