2025 Global ESSAY PRIZE
Registrations open 1st April 2025
The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style. Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.
Entering an essay in our competition can build knowledge, and refine skills of argumentation. It also gives students the chance to have their work assessed by experts. All of our essay prizes are judged by a panel of senior academics drawn from leading universities including Oxford and Princeton, under the leadership of the Chairman of Examiners, Prof Terence Kealey.
The judges will choose their favourite essay from each of seven subject categories - Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law - and then select the winner of the Grand Prize for the best entry in any subject. There is also a separate prize awarded for the best essay in the junior category, for under 15s.
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Philosophy
Q1. What moral obligations do we owe to living persons that we do not owe to future persons? What are the implications of your answer for policy-making?
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Q2. Should we treat non-human animals well because they have rights, interests, neither, or both?
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Q3. "When civilians are the main target, there's no need to consider the cause. That's terrorism; it's evil." Is this correct?​
Politics
Q1. Should politicians ever be punished for lying?
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Q2. David Hume celebrated the wisdom of "unlettered men". In a democracy, do the votes of the unlettered tend to protect a country against the bad ideas of the lettered or do the votes of the lettered tend to protect a country against the bad ideas of the unlettered?
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Q3. Diversity is fashionable, but is it valuable?​
Economics
Q1. What kinds of behaviour are engendered by the hope of profit? Is such behaviour better or worse, on balance, than the behaviour we should expect if all enterprises were owned by charities or governments?
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Q2. What will be the effect on socio-economic mobility of the UK government's plan to impose value added tax on school fees?
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Q3. Should Oxford lower its admissions standards for the sons and daughters of generous benefactors?​
Q1. According to Bertrand Russell, "Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill of Locke." To what extent was he correct?
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Q2. Should anyone be ashamed of their nation's history? Should anyone be proud of it?
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Q3. Which figure in history did most to enlarge human freedom?
Law
Q1. What injury should one person be permitted to inflict on another in the defence of private property?
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Q2. “Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?” Should the law treat offenders better than they deserve?
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Q3. Is Vladimir Putin a war criminal?
Psychology
Q1. Is objectivity all in the mind?​
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Q2. Eleanor Roosevelt declared, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Is she right?
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Q3. What is self-deceit?
Q1. Is atheism implausible?
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Q2. Why would the creator of a trillion galaxies become angry if you have sex with your boyfriend or eat bacon for breakfast?
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Q3. Why pray?
Q1. Your citizenship at birth was chosen for you. Which citizenship would you have chosen?
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Q2. Do you benefit more from your own freedom of speech or from other people’s?
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Q3. Who is more powerful - Donald Trump or Elon Musk?
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Q4. Since 1920, twenty-one presidents and prime ministers from nine countries have been graduates of Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) at Oxford. Would it have been better if they had studied history?
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Q5. What is your fair share of what someone else has earned?
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Q6. Why do you continue to use your smartphone more than is good for you?
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Q7. Why do people become more boring as they grow up and grow older?
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
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FURTHER DETAILS
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Please read the following carefully.
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Entry to the John Locke Institute Essay Competition 2025 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 Saturday, 31 May 2025 may enter this year's competition. You can register here.
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Submission
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All entries must be submitted by 11.59 pm BST on the submission deadline: Monday, 30 June 2025. 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, 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) Your essay must be submitted before 11.59 pm BST on Monday, 7 July 2025 (for the seven day extended deadline) or Monday, 21 July 2025 (for the twenty-one day extended deadline), and
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b) A late entry fee of 25.00 GBP (for the seven day extension) or 75.00 GBP (for the twenty-one day extension) must be paid by credit card within twenty-four hours of the missed deadline.
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 Thursday, 31 July. They will also be invited to London for an invitation-only academic conference and awards dinner in October, 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 are prizes for the best essays in each category. The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior category, is a scholarship worth US$5000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute programme. The second place winner will receive a scholarship worth US$2000 and the third place winner will receive a scholarship worth US$1000. The prize-giving ceremony will take place in London on Saturday, 4 October, 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, 2025.
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Registration deadline: 31 May, 2025. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)
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Submission deadline: 30 June, 2025.
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Late entry deadline: 7 July, 2025 (for seven day extension) or 21 July, 2025 (for twenty-one day extension).
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Notification of short-listed essayists: 31 July, 2025.
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Academic conference: 3 - 5 October, 2025.
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Awards dinner: 4 October, 2025.
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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 2025 essay competition, please provide your email here to be added to our contact list.
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From the Chairman of Examiners
The John Locke Institute's Global Essay Prize is acknowledged as the world's most prestigious essay competition.
We welcome tens of thousands of submissions from ambitious students in more than 150 countries, and our examiners - including distinguished philosophers, political scientists, economists, historians, psychologists, theologians, and legal scholars - read and carefully assess every entry.
I encourage you to register for this competition, not only for the hope of winning a prize or commendation, and not only for the chance to join the very best contestants at our academic conference and gala ceremony in London, but equally for the opportunity to engage in the serious scholarly enterprise of researching, reflecting on, writing about, and editing an answer to one of the important and provocative questions in this year's Global Essay Prize.
We believe that the skills you will acquire in the process will make you a better thinker and a more effective advocate for the ideas that matter most to you.
I hope to see you in September!
Best wishes,
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Professor Terence Kealey, D. Phil. (Oxon)
Chairman of Examiners
Princeton: +1 (609) 608-0543 . Oxford: +44 (0)1865 566166 . admissions@johnlocke.com
Q. I missed the registration deadline. May I still register or submit an essay?
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A. No. Only candidates who registered before 31 May will be able to submit an essay.
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Q. Are footnotes, endnotes, a bibliography or references counted towards the word limit?
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A. No. Only the body of the essay is counted.
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Q. Are in-text citations counted towards the word limit?​
A. If you are using an in-text based referencing format, such as APA, your in-text citations are included in the word limit.
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Q. Is it necessary to include footnotes or endnotes in an essay?​
A. You may not include footnotes, but you may include in-text citations or endnotes. You should give your sources of any factual claims you make, and you should acknowledge any other authors on whom you rely.​
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Q. I am interested in a question that seems ambiguous. How should I interpret it?
A. You may interpret a question as you deem appropriate, clarifying your interpretation if necessary. Having done so, you must answer the question as directly as possible.
Q. How strict are the age eligibility criteria?
A. Only students whose nineteenth birthday falls after 30 June 2025 will be eligible for a prize or a commendation. In the case of the Junior category, only students whose fifteenth birthday falls after 30 June 2025 will be eligible for a prize or a commendation.
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Q. If I am 13 years old and unable to find a topic of interest from the junior list of essay questions, am I allowed to choose a question from the senior list, or must I select only from the junior category?
A. Yes, you are allowed to choose a question from the senior list. While the junior list is designed for younger participants, selecting from the senior list is perfectly acceptable if you feel confident in tackling a more advanced topic.
Q. May I submit more than one essay?
A. Yes, you may submit as many essays as you please in any or all categories.
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Q. If I am eligible to compete in the Junior category, may I also (or instead) compete in another category?
A. Yes, you may.
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Q. May I team up with someone else to write an essay?
A. No. Each submitted essay must be entirely the work of a single individual.
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Q. May I use AI, such as ChatGPT or the like, in writing my essay?
A. All essays will be checked for the use of AI. If we find that any content is generated by AI, your essay will be disqualified. We will also ask you, upon submission of your essay, whether you used AI for any purpose related to the writing of your essay, and if so, you will be required to provide details. In that case, if, in our judgement, you have not provided full and accurate details of your use of AI, your essay will be disqualified.
Since any use of AI (that does not result in disqualification) can only negatively affect our assessment of your work relative to that of work that is done without using AI, your safest course of action is simply not to use it at all. If, however, you choose to use it for any purpose, we reserve the right to make relevant judgements on a case-by-case basis and we will not enter into any correspondence.
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Q. May I have someone else edit, or otherwise help me with, my essay?
A. You may of course discuss your essay with others, and it is perfectly acceptable for them to offer general advice and point out errors or weaknesses in your writing or content, leaving you to address them.
However, no part of your essay may be written by anyone else. This means that you must edit your own work and that while a proofreader may point out errors, you as the essayist must be the one to correct them.
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Q. Do I have to attend the awards ceremony to win a prize?​
A. Nobody is required to attend the prize ceremony. You can win a prize without travelling to London. But if we invite you to London it is because your essay was good enough - in the opinion of the First Round judges - to be at least a contender for First, Second or Third Prize. Normally the Second Round judges will agree that the short-listed essays are worth at least a commendation.
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Q. Is there an entry fee?
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A. No. There is no charge to enter our global essay competition unless you submit your essay after the normal deadline, in which case there is a fee of 25.00 GBP (for the seven day extension) or 75.00 GBP (for the twenty-one day extension).
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Q. Can I receive a certificate for my participation in your essay competition if I wasn't shortlisted?
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A. No. Certificates are awarded only for shortlisted essays. Short-listed contestants who attend the award ceremony in London will receive a paper certificate. If you cannot travel to London, you will be able to download your eCertificate.
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Q. Can I receive feedback on my essay?
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A. We would love to be able to give individual feedback on essays but, unfortunately, we receive too many entries to be able to comment on particular essays.
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Q. The deadline for publishing the names of short-listed essayists has passed but I did not receive an email to tell me whether I was short-listed.
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A. Log into your account and check "Shortlist Status" for (each of) your essay(s).​
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Q. The system will not accept my essay. I have checked the filename and it has the correct format. What should I do?
A. You have almost certainly added a space before or after one of your names in your profile. Edit it accordingly and try to submit again.
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Q. The profile page shows my birth date to be wrong by a day, even after I edit it. What should I do?
A. Ignore it. The date that you typed has been correctly input to our database.​​
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Q. How can I be sure that my registration for the essay competition was successful? Will I receive a confirmation email?
A. You will not receive a confirmation email. Rather, you can at any time log in to the account that you created and see that your registration details are present and correct.
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