Today, near-perfect grades and test scores are no longer enough to guarantee admission into top universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. Among equally qualified applicants, extracurricular participation that demonstrates skill, leadership, and genuine passion is the best way to stand out from the crowd.
From athletics to music to MUN, parents and families have a wealth of fantastic opportunities to choose from. As debate coaches, we often feel the need to explain why debate is the right choice for so many students when so many alternatives exist. After all, any form of academic coaching is a substantial investment in a child’s future. It is easy to justify participation in debate via the immediate return on investment that it brings with college admissions. As a statistical group, debaters are 7 times more likely to be admitted into a Top 10 University, score 10% higher on standardised tests, and have grades 20% higher than their peers (Why Debate: https://atlanticdebate.com/
These statistics, while impressive, they do not tell the full story of why participating in debate is such a transformative intellectual experience. Debate cultivates three qualitative skills that are essential for any student coming of age in this era of technological disruption.
First, debate teaches students how to question and defend their beliefs.
Traditional classroom essays may not fully prepare students to construct arguments under scrutiny. While a student may receive poor marks for a clearly flawed piece of writing, they are usually rewarded for proving a thesis in a logical and concise manner. Unlike in debate, students never have to defend this thesis against an intellectual adversary. In real life, in business meetings, in politics and economics, and even in deciding where to go out to lunch, we are often faced with two sets of good, logical ideas. By requiring that students prove why one idea is better than another, debate forces them to be intellectually honest. The only way to prove your case is to defend its weakest parts. The only way to defeat your opponent’s case is to beat its strongest parts. In learning how to critically combat arguments, students not only become better advocates for their cause but also gain the intellectual humility to recognize where and when they might be wrong.
Second, debate forces students to think on their feet and become strong public speakers.
Every round of debate is unique. Unlike some extracurricular contests where you can script your entire submission, debate requires quick wits and a sharp voice to defend the work that you have already done. In our decades of experience, we have noticed that two changes rapidly occur once a student starts competing. First, they won’t stop speaking. While the idea of talking for four, five, six, or even seven minutes in a row to an audience may seem intimidating at first, students quickly go from struggling to fill speech time to having so much to say that they can’t get it all in and need to practise word efficiency! Second, students become expert improvisers. When we teach them proven techniques to generate arguments on the fly, pivot their rhetoric based on audience reactions, and rebut objections using a structured method, they quickly gain the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. This skill is invaluable in high-pressure situations like academic presentations, job interviews, and graduate thesis defences.
Third, debate teaches students to connect knowledge and persuasion.
Our students are entering into a world that is very different from the one that we grew up in. The average person not only has access to all of the world’s knowledge in their back pocket, they can also leverage the power of artificial intelligence to crunch data and generate content at a rate that vastly exceeds the productivity of every human on the planet. What this means is that ‘soft skills’ or knowing how to think and communicate, has never been more important. Debate is a game of human reasoning and persuasion. We teach students to look their judge in the eye, to explain clearly why an argument is important, and to relate it to the shared values and ideals that define our community. When everyone has access to good facts and statistics, this is what matters. While debate is usually thought of as having a close relationship to the humanities and social sciences, many of our students actually go on to become engineers and doctors. In fact, they will be the ones whose professions utilise the miracles of modern technology the most. They find debate so useful because it teaches them to cut through the data on the screen to reach the audience; whether that audience is a patient with a rare condition, a government agency contracting construction, or the average person considering downloading a new app on their smartphone. Regardless of who you are or what you plan to do, learning to be an advocate to others and making them care about your causes is an invaluable skill and what we excel at teaching.
About Atlantic Ivy Dubai (atlanticdebate.com)
Who we are
At Atlantic Ivy, we prepare the next generation of leaders to confidently express their thoughts and understand global issues. We teach Speech & Debate Classes both online and in-person to students of all age groups and skill levels.
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World Class Instructors: Our instructors are some of the most successful coaches in history; including the former head coaches of the Oxford and Harvard Debate Unions
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Tournament Opportunities: Atlantic Ivy are official partners with Harvard College Debating Union & Oxford Union, where we have access to exclusive tournament opportunities in and outside of the UAE.
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Small Class Size: All of our classes are seminar and activities based, ensuring personal connections and ample engagements.
Email: Info@atlanticdebate.com
WhatsApp: +971 509336806
Website: atlanticdebate.com
About the Author
Ricky Huang is the founder of Atlantic Ivy Debate, an education company that focuses on growing Speech & Debate in the GCC (atlanticdebate.com). Prior to founding Atlantic Ivy, Ricky served as the Director of Training at the Oxford Union. He has taught Speech Debate courses at more than 10 universities and 20 high schools worldwide.
