Why Us?

Why Join Irvington Debate? 

PUBLIC SPEAKING

Debate is predicated on your ability to argue a stance on a topic, and even if you’re not comfortable with this skill yet, attending our sessions regularly will provide you a great deal of learning and advice to do so!

Whether it be in an argumentative situation or otherwise, Debate enables you to develop these public speaking skills which can be applied anywhere in your day-to-day interactions. In-class socratics, learning how to deliver effortless presentations, knowing how to speak professionally with teachers, fellow officers in an organization or club, and more!

 

RESEARCH ABILITY

Irvington debate offers two events: parliamentary and LD. Regardless of which event you compete in, research is key, and will allow you to level up your researching skills. 

  • In parliamentary debate, you are given 20 minutes before each round to prepare a case to debate on for the entire round. As a result, your ability to find information in short periods of time significantly improves, allowing you to apply these skills elsewhere when applicable

  • On the other hand, LD topics are released months prior to the tournament, so being able to do in depth research, and prepare a comprehensive stance on the resolution, will allow you to be prepared, and inherently improve your ability to develop arguments effectively and efficiently

 

COLLEGE APPLICATIONS

As high schoolers, college applications tend to be something students worry about when deciding what clubs to join - Debate has you covered! Debate enables you to exercise critical thinking, and has been proven by various sources to help you out in this endeavor:

  • Irvington Debate alumni have consistently been admitted into prestigious colleges such as Stanford, Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, Yale, MIT, USC, UC Berkley, UCLA, and more.

  • Sheila Thimba, Dean of Administrations of Harvard University: Just joining debate increases your chances of getting into a top college by 9%

  • Professor Minh A. Luong at Yale: “My top students are most often former high school debaters.”

 

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