Experience as a Delegate at Harvard University

The Harvard College Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) is a student-led conference associated with Harvard University held twice an year which brings together international students and young professionals in the fields of academics, politics and business to discuss and learn about the most important economic, political, and social issues facing the Asia-Pacific region.

The application process is highly competitive as the acceptance rate is less than 30% which means that approximately 300 delegates are selected from the whole of Asia. The application involves two essays on questions which are asked to you upon your personal experiences or how you would react in a certain situation with an appropriate solution along with your well formatted resume. Once submitted, it takes about two or three months to be checked by the authorities at Harvard. If your essays indicate that you are someone who can contribute towards the panel with your ideas or experiences, they send you an email to reserve time for a Skype interview. Once you are accepted, you only need to pay for the registration cost for which you can apply for a scholarship explaining why you need it in a video format as it costs around 300 USD. The rest of your trip to the conference destination will be fully sponsored by Harvard which varies every year.

I attended the 2021 conference destined for Taiwan but due to the unfortunate pandemic conditions it was held virtually. The speakers of the conference which I attended featured the CEOs of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Infosys, Malaysia Airlines; Executives from Amazon, Zoom, Facebook, Tesla, Quora, Twitch, Hulu, etc; Elected public policy officials (Minister of Education for Indonesia, Minister of Defense for Japan and Governor of Tokyo, Minister of Culture for the U.K., Member of Parliament for Singapore, the United States Trade Ambassador, etc); Nobel prize winning academics and Harvard Professors (Muhammed Yunus, Professor Peter Singer, Professor Daniel Nocera, etc); Entertainment celebrities (musicians Steve Aoki and Nathan East), and countless others!

You get an opportunity to interact with the speakers and fellow delegates to discuss the problems you want to talk about and their solutions. The theme of the conference which I attended was Reinventing with Resilience. You also get to meet a lot of people from diverse backgrounds from around the world. It is an amazing period of time to make some worthy contacts from around the world, both among delegates and the speakers, apart from the excitement of a new city and country. It was an experience which was worth the effort and wait!