Entry to the John Locke Institute Essay Competition 2025 is open to students from any country.Registration: Only candidates who registered before the registration deadline of Saturday, 31 May 2025 may enter this year's competition. You can register here.
Submission: Submissions open on Sunday, 1 June 2025. 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 Fee: Entry is free.

Essay Requirements: ● 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.● ​The candidate's name should NOT appear within the document itself. ● ​Candidates should NOT add footnotes. They may, however, add endnotes and/or a Bibliography that is clearly titled as such.● ​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.  ● ​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. 
Assessment● ​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.
Results● ​The writers of the best essays will 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● 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. ● The judges' decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

● Registration opens: 1 April 2025.
● Registration deadline: 31 May 2025. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)
● Submissions open: 1 June 2025.
● Submission deadline: 30 June, 2025.
● Late entry deadline: 7 July, 2025 (for seven ay extension) or 21 July, 2025 (for twenty-one day extension). 
● Notification of short-listed essayists: 14 August, 2025.
● Academic conference: 3 - 5 October, 2025.
● Awards dinner: 4 October, 2025.