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Please read the following carefully.

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Entry to the John Locke Institute Essay Competition 2024 is open to students from any country.

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Registration 

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Only candidates who registered before the registration deadline of Friday, 31 May 2024 may enter this year's competition.

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Submission

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All entries must be submitted by 11.59 pm BST on the submission deadline: Sunday, 30 June 2024. Candidates must be eighteen years old, or younger, on that date. (Candidates for the Junior Prize must be fourteen years old, or younger, on that date.)

Entry is free.

Each essay must address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, endnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration). 

The filename of your pdf must be in this format: FirstName-LastName-Category-QuestionNumber.pdf; so, for instance, Alexander Popham would submit his answer to question 2 in the Psychology category with the following file name:

 

Alexander-Popham-Psychology-2.pdf

 

Essays with filenames which are not in this format will be rejected.

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The candidate's name should NOT appear within the document itself. 

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Candidates should NOT add footnotes. They may, however, add endnotes and/or a Bibliography that is clearly titled as such.

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Each candidate will be required to provide the email address of an academic referee who is familiar with the candidate's written academic work. This should be a school teacher, if possible, or another responsible adult who is not a relation of the candidate. The John Locke Institute will email referees to verify that the essays submitted are indeed the original work of the candidates.

Submissions may be made as soon as registration opens in April. We recommend that you submit your essay well in advance of the deadline to avoid any last-minute complications.

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Acceptance of your essay depends on your granting us permission to use your data for the purposes of receiving and processing your entry as well as communicating with you about the Awards Ceremony Dinner, the academic conference for essay competition finalists, and other events and programmes of the John Locke Institute and its associated entities.
 

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Late entries

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If for any reason you miss the 30 June deadline you will have an opportunity to make a late entry, under two conditions:

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a) A late entry fee of 20.00 USD must be paid by credit card within twenty-four hours of the original deadline; and

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b) Your essay must be submitted before 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 10 July 2024.

 

To pay for late entry, a registrant need only log into his or her account, select the relevant option and provide the requested payment information.

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Assessment

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Our grading system is proprietary. Essayists may be asked to discuss their entry with a member of the John Locke Institute’s faculty. We use various means to identify plagiarism, contract cheating, the use of AI and other forms of fraud. Our determinations in all such matters are final.

Essays will be judged on knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. The very best essays are likely to be those which would be capable of changing somebody's mind. Essays which ignore or fail to address the strongest objections and counter-arguments are unlikely to be successful.

Candidates are advised to answer the question as precisely and directly as possible.

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Results

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The writers of the best essays will receive a commendation and be shortlisted for a prize. Writers of shortlisted essays will be notified by 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 31 July. They will also be invited to London for an invitation-only academic conference and awards dinner in September, where the prize-winners will be announced. Unlike the competition itself, the academic conference and awards dinner are not free. Please be aware that nobody is required to attend either the academic conference or the prize ceremony. You can win a prize without travelling to London.

All short-listed candidates, including prize-winners, will be able to download eCertificates that acknowledge their achievement. If you win First, Second or Third Prize, and you travel to London for the ceremony, you will receive a signed certificate. 

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Prizes

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There is a prize for the best essay in each category. The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior category, is a scholarship worth US$2000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute programme, and the essays will be published on the Institute's website. Prize-giving ceremonies will take place in London, at which winners and runners-up will be able to meet some of the judges and other faculty members of the John Locke Institute. Family, friends, and teachers are also welcome.

The candidate who submits the best essay overall will be awarded an honorary John Locke Institute Junior Fellowship, which comes with a US$10,000 scholarship to attend one or more of our summer schools and/or visiting scholars programmes. 

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The judges' decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

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Key Dates

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• Registration opens: 1 April, 2024.

• Registration deadline: 31 May, 2024. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)

• Submission deadline: 30 June, 2024.

• Late entry deadline: 10 July, 2024. (Late entries are subject to a 20.00 USD charge, payable by 1 July.)

• Notification of short-listed essayists: 31 July, 2024.

• Academic conference: 20 - 22 September, 2024.

• Awards dinner: 21 September, 2024.

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Contact

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Any queries regarding the essay competition should be sent to global.essay.prize@johnlocke.com. Please be aware that, due to the large volume of correspondence we receive, we cannot guarantee to answer every query. In particular, regrettably, we are unable to respond to questions whose answers can be found on our website.

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If you would like to receive helpful tips from our examiners about what makes for a winning essay or reminders of upcoming key dates for the 2024 essay competition, please provide your email here to be added to our contact list. 

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