Competition Guidelines

The following guidelines will provide key information about student eligibility and registration, as well as some general rules on submissions. More detailed guidelines on the submission will be sent to each participant’s registered email.

Eligibility: 

• Students must be between the ages of 13-18 and currently enrolled in a secondary or high school at the time of the global competition in February 2024 -OR- have not started university studies yet and be under the age of 18.

Registration:

• The registration fee is US$15 per student and must be paid upon registration

All guidelines are relevant to the regional and global round

Submission Guidelines

Download submission example here

Document’s heading must include participant’s:

• Full Name

• Essay category (creative, argumentative, or journalistic)

• Chosen prompt

• Registered email

• Competition region - must be the region you registered for

  This information does not count towards the submission word limit

Submission must be:

• Titled the same as the chosen prompt (You should not create your own title)

• No more than 500 words (500 words does not include citations, headlines, titles, names)

• In Word document form (.doc or .docx) No google docs or google drive links for submission.

• Font - Times New Roman

• Size - 11.

• Spaced- 1.5

DO NOT MAKE MULTIPLE SUBMISSIONS

Naming your .doc

• Begin the name of the .doc with the number corresponding to the selected prompt 1, 2, or 3.

  • Prompts will be numbered on the submission form.

• + followed by "_ creative" or “_argumentative”, or “_journalistic”

• + followed by “Participant’s surname”

• An example would be "2_creative_doe" -> download example here

Submissions must be the participants’ original work. Any plagiarism will result in disqualification

Submissions after the deadline of Thursday, February 22nd, 23:59 GMT+0 will not be accepted.

Please see the FAQ page for further common queries.