essay judging criteria

The Scholastic Awards Writing Rubric: What Is It and How Can It Improve Your Writing?

When jurors review writing works during the awards selection process, they must keep in mind the Awards’ three judging criteria:

Originality

Work that breaks from convention, blurs the boundaries between genres, and challenges notions of how a particular concept or emotion can be expressed.

Technical Skill

Work that uses technique to advance an original perspective or a personal vision or voice, and shows skills being utilized to create something unique, powerful, and innovative.

Emergence of a Personal Voice or Vision

Work with an authentic and unique point of view and style.

We’ve used the same judging criteria since the Awards began in 1923 and have found it useful for identifying works that show promise. But how are those criteria used when reviewing teen writing? To assist our judges with making their selections, we’ve put together a rubric that offers guides to help the jurors determine which works meet the criteria and which works exceed them.

Students and educators may want to review the rubric to see where their works fall and what they can improve. For instance, rambling sentences can drown out a strong voice, and works that are grammatically correct can fall short of the originality criteria if they don’t present any new ideas. Like any skill, writing can be improved with practice, and reviewing the rubric may help.

Featured Image

Zoya Makkar, Awake from an Ignorant Slumber , Photography. Grade 10, Plano East Senior High School, Plano, TX. Karen Stanton, Educator ; Region-at-Large, Affiliate . Gold Medal 2021

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Criteria for Judging Essays in the Creative Writing Competition 2013

Related Papers

Elaine Sharplin

Saeed Rezaei , Mary Vz

Drawing on a modified version of Delphi technique, the researchers in this study tried to develop a rubric comprising the main criteria to be considered in the evaluation of works of fiction. Review of the related literature, as well as the administration of a Likert scale questionnaire, and a series of unstructured interviews with experts in the fields of literature and creative writing, led to the identification of ten elements which were used in the construction of the first version of the rubric. To ensure its validity, a number of distinguished creative writing professors were asked to review this assessment tool and comment on its appropriateness for measuring the intended construct. Some revisions were made based on these comments, and following that, the researchers came up with an analytical rubric consisting of nine elements, namely narrative voice, characterisation, story, setting, mood and atmosphere, language and writing mechanics, dialogue, plot, and image. The reliability of this rubric was also established through the calculation of both interrater and intrarater reliability. Finally, the significance of the development of this valid and reliable rubric is discussed and its implications for teaching and assessing creative pieces of writing are presented.

Lawrence Rudner

Journal of Educational Psychology

Sarah Freedman

Journal of Technology Learning and Assessment

Jill Burstein

International Journal of Quality Assurance in Engineering and Technology Education

The most widely used creativity assessments are divergent thinking tests, but these and other popular creativity measures have been shown to have little validity. The Consensual Assessment Technique is a powerful tool used by creativity researchers in which panels of expert judges are asked to rate the creativity of creative products such as stories, collages, poems, and other artifacts. The Consensual Assessment Technique is based on the idea that the best measure of the creativity of a work of art, a theory, a research proposal, or any other artifact is the combined assessment of experts in that field. Unlike other measures of creativity, the Consensual Assessment Technique is not based on any particular theory of creativity, which means that its validity (which has been well established empirically) is not dependent upon the validity of any particular theory of creativity. The Consensual Assessment Technique has been deemed the “gold standard” in creativity research and can be ve...

Journal of Writing Assessment

Vicki Hester

Mustafa Kemal Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu Dergisi

yakup gökhan çetin

hakan aydogan

RELATED PAPERS

Jurnal Ilmiah Mahasiswa Agroinfo Galuh

Agus Yuniawan Isyanto

Blucher Design Proceedings

Isabela Fontana

Bagus Anggriawan

Sara Falcão Casaca

Han Geurdes

River Basin Management

Alan Guthrie

mahmudul alam

Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları

Zhanar Seitzhan

Umberto Moscatelli

SSRN Electronic Journal

Ibrahim Muhammad

Artigo publicado no volume 11 da Diálogo das Letras

Diálogo das Letras

Revista Brasileira de Cardiologia Invasiva

Leonardo A alves

Applied Economics & Business

Dr. JMJK Jayasinghe

Antimicrobial Stewardship & Healthcare Epidemiology

Alejandro Pezzulo

Revista de Estudios Políticos

Argimiro Rojo Salgado

Journal of Clinical and Investigative Dermatology

Shrook Khashaba

Lasers in Medical Science

Lopes-martins Ra

Revista Brasileira de História, Vol. 39, n. 81

José-Augusto Pádua

Creative Artist: A Journal of Theatre and Media Studies

TRACIE UTOH-EZEAJUGH

Social Science & Medicine

Freddy Mortier

Katia Salib Deffaci

Linos Lazarides

Journal of Molecular Liquids

Vasile Lavric

iberchip.net

Dante Barone

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

< back to blog

How to Judge a Contest: Guide, Shortcuts and Examples

What is a Co ntest?

A contest is an activity where skill is needed to win. Unlike a Sweepstakes where a random draw identifies the winner, in a contest the participants has to take an action that requires some degree of skill . That degree of skill depends on what the promotion or event is asking the participant to do. For example; in an essay contest, participants enter and compete by submitting original writing.

The Legal Contest Formula 

Prize + consideration (monetary fee or demonstration of skill) = legal contest (in most jurisdictions)

Are Contest Legal in the US?

Yes. All 50 States allow contest promotions. All contests are allowed as long as the sponsor awards the prize based on skill and not chance.

See Contest Rules and Laws by State.

The Judging Criteria

Contests also have an element of competition that requires the Sponsor or agency to set clear contest judging criteria so participants know how their entries will be judged. This criteria will also tell the judging body what to look for and how to assign value or rank entries.

As a marketer, you can save yourself a lot of potential trouble, and complaints, if your judging criteria is clear to all participants and judges. For example: “ Es s ay Submissions must be in English, comply with Official Rules, meet all requirements called for on the Contest Website and be original work not exceeding 1,000 characters in length.”

The “How-To” Guide for Judging

In a contest, the judging criteria is an attempt to focus the participants, as well as the judges, on the expected outcome of the entry. Properly designed judging criteria aims to minimize the judges unconscious biases and focus their attention on the qualities that are going to be weighed and assigned a value or score. For example, a judging criteria score sheet may rank values as “ 33.3% for creativity, 33.3% for originality; and 33.3% for adherence to topic .”

Judges (ideally more than one) should be experts or have some degree of expertise in what they are judging. This is not a requirement, but it helps the Sponsor or contest administrator select the winner. The contestants also gain a sense of fair play when they see the winner was chosen by experts.

How to Pick Judges for the Contest

If you can’t find expert judges, then individuals or a group with a clear understanding of the judging criteria and no conflicts of interest or bias could serve as judges. Beyond the judging criteria, the judges should have seen enough examples of the work being judged to determine what is considered poor, average and exceptional within the criteria.

Judges Goals

Ultimately, judges aim to assign a total value or points to each entry and select the winner based on total amount of points earned.

Judging Shortcut

A shortcut to judging large numbers of entries is to use social media networks to judge on your behalf up to a certain degree. For example, you can run your contest on Facebook and have the fans vote for the top five entries. From there a more formalized judge or contest administrator can select the winner based on the criteria. This can work well, but there are risks associated with fan voting. One of the risks is that participants can simply ask their friends to vote for them regardless of the quality of the work. It undermines the promotional effort when a poor entry gets lots of votes. This is why we don’t recommend that fan votes make the final decision on who wins.

Protect Your Contest With Judging Criteria

Having your judging criteria set will also protect the integrity of the contest and guide judges if there is a tie. A well-articulated judging criteria will explain what to do in the event of a tie. For example; “ In the event of a tie for any potential Winning Entry, the score for Creativity/Originality will be used as a tiebreaker.” Or “If there still remains a tie, Sponsor will bring in a tie-breaking Judge to apply the same Judging Criteria to determine the winner .”

Rules for Social Media Contests

Contests are allowed in all social media platforms as long as you follow state laws and the social media platform’s own set of rules.

• Facebook Contest Rules you should follow, along with a few Facebook contest ideas to help you get started. See Facebook Contest Rules
• Instagram has some strict rules that you need to be aware of and follow closely if you want your promotion to be successful. See Instagram Contest Rules
• Pinterest can help you connect with your customers, especially if your business is related to the types of content that often trend on Pinterest like fashion, food, and beauty. See Pinterest Promotion Rules 
• For Twitter see Guidelines for Promotions on Twitter (sorry, we haven’t written a rules article on Twitter yet.)
• For Youtube see YouTube’s Contest Policies and Guidelines (sorry, we haven’t written a rules article on Youtube yet.)

Can You Charge Participants an Entry Fee?

Yes, as long as the winners are chosen by skill and not chance (randomly).

Remember: Prize + consideration (monetary fee or skill) = legal contest (in most jurisdictions)

Contest Official Rules Examples

Better Homes & Gardens America’s Best Front Yard Official Contest Rules

Bottom Line: Contests are a Great Marketing Tool

Contests are worth the effort and repay the sponsor handsomely. They’re fun and generate a lot of buzz, awareness and potential sales for the sponsor. Just make sure your judging criteria are set in place.  If you need any help with your contest let us know at [email protected] .

Need help witha Contest? See our Contest Management Services

Want to build a sweepstakes by text?  See our features and pricing .

• University of Pennsylvania
• School of Arts and Sciences
• Penn Calendar

Search form

Evaluation Criteria for Formal Essays

Katherine milligan.

Please note that these four categories are interdependent. For example, if your evidence is weak, this will almost certainly affect the quality of your argument and organization. Likewise, if you have difficulty with syntax, it is to be expected that your transitions will suffer. In revision, therefore, take a holistic approach to improving your essay, rather than focussing exclusively on one aspect.

An excellent paper:

Argument: The paper knows what it wants to say and why it wants to say it. It goes beyond pointing out comparisons to using them to change the reader?s vision. Organization: Every paragraph supports the main argument in a coherent way, and clear transitions point out why each new paragraph follows the previous one. Evidence: Concrete examples from texts support general points about how those texts work. The paper provides the source and significance of each piece of evidence. Mechanics: The paper uses correct spelling and punctuation. In short, it generally exhibits a good command of academic prose.

A mediocre paper:

Argument: The paper replaces an argument with a topic, giving a series of related observations without suggesting a logic for their presentation or a reason for presenting them. Organization: The observations of the paper are listed rather than organized. Often, this is a symptom of a problem in argument, as the framing of the paper has not provided a path for evidence to follow. Evidence: The paper offers very little concrete evidence, instead relying on plot summary or generalities to talk about a text. If concrete evidence is present, its origin or significance is not clear. Mechanics: The paper contains frequent errors in syntax, agreement, pronoun reference, and/or punctuation.

An appallingly bad paper:

Argument: The paper lacks even a consistent topic, providing a series of largely unrelated observations. Organization: The observations are listed rather than organized, and some of them do not appear to belong in the paper at all. Both paper and paragraphs lack coherence. Evidence: The paper offers no concrete evidence from the texts or misuses a little evidence. Mechanics: The paper contains constant and glaring errors in syntax, agreement, reference, spelling, and/or punctuation.

Criteria for Judging

Content (55%), demonstrated understanding of political courage.

• Demonstrated an understanding of political courage as described by John F. Kennedy in  Profiles in Courage
• Identified an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or after 1917.
• Proved that the elected official risked his or her career to address an issue at the local, state, national, or international level
• Explained why the official's course of action best serves or has served the larger public interest
• Outlined the obstacles, dangers, and pressures the elected official is encountering or has encountered

 Originality

• Thoughtful, original choice of a U.S. elected official
• Story is not widely known, or a well-known story is portrayed in a unique way
• Essay subject is not on the list of most written about essay subjects .

Supporting Evidence

• Well-researched
• Convincing arguments supported with specific examples
• Critical analysis of acts of political courage

Source Material

• Bibliography of five or more varied sources
• Includes primary source material
• Thoughtfully selected, reliable   

Presentation (45%)

Quality of writing.

• Style, clarity, flow, vocabulary

Organization

• Structure, paragraphing, introduction and conclusion

Conventions

• Syntax, grammar, spelling, and punctuation

An essay will be disqualified if:

• It is not on the topic.
• The subject is not an elected official.
• The subject is John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, or Edward M. Kennedy.
• The subject is a previous  Profile in Courage Award recipient  unless the essay describes an act of political courage other than the act for which the award was given.
• The subject is a senator featured in  Profiles in Courage .
• The essay focuses on an act of political courage that occurred prior to 1917.
• It does not include a minimum of five sources.
• It is more than 1,000 words or less than 700 words (not including citations and bibliography.)
• It is postmarked or submitted by email after the deadline.
• It is not the student’s original work.

Essay Writing Contests: Organizing and Judging for Middle School Students

Nov 24, 2023 | Education , Family

Essay writing contests are a fantastic way for middle school students to hone their writing skills and express their creativity. These contests can challenge students to think critically and articulate their thoughts coherently, fostering a love for writing at an early age. For educators and organizers, the challenge lies in creating a contest that is both encouraging and fair, helping young writers develop their skills in a supportive environment.

While some students might be tempted to seek an essay writing service to write me a paper , essay contests offer a more enriching experience. They provide an opportunity for students to engage in creative and analytical thinking, develop their writing style, and gain confidence in their abilities.

Organizing the Contest

Planning and preparation.

Theme Selection : It’s crucial to select a theme that resonates with middle schoolers, sparking their imagination and creativity. The theme should be broad enough to allow various interpretations yet specific enough to provide some direction.

Inclusivity in Themes : Consider themes that cater to a wide range of interests and backgrounds, ensuring every participant feels included and excited to write.

Rules and Guidelines : Rules should be clear but not overly restrictive. Balance between providing enough structure for quality submissions and allowing creative freedom is key. Accessibility of these guidelines is crucial. Consider multiple platforms for dissemination.

Promotion and Participation

School Involvement : Actively engage with school administrators and teachers. This could include informational sessions in classrooms, distributing flyers, and digital announcements via school platforms.

Incorporating into Curriculum : Teachers can weave the essay contest into their teaching plans, perhaps aligning it with relevant topics being covered in class.

Diverse Participation : Reach out to various student groups and clubs to ensure broad participation. Encourage students from different backgrounds to bring their unique perspectives.

Preparatory Workshops : Organize workshops focusing on essay writing skills, idea generation, and research methods to help students prepare.

Judging the Essays

Setting criteria.

Comprehensive Criteria : Along with creativity and structure, include criteria like relevance to the theme, use of language, and persuasive power of the argument. This helps students understand different facets of good writing.

Transparency in Judging Process : Communicate the judging process to participants to ensure transparency and build trust in the contest’s integrity.

Diverse Judging Panel

Expert Inclusion : Include experts in children’s literature or education to bring a professional perspective to the judging process.

Student Judges : Involve older students as junior judges to provide a peer perspective, which can be particularly encouraging for participants.

Feedback and Evaluation

Constructive Feedback : Detailed feedback helps students understand not just what needs improvement but also what they did well.

Individualized Attention : Try to ensure feedback is personalized, reflecting an understanding of each student’s writing style and effort.

Promoting Learning and Growth

Skill-Building Sessions : Prior to the contest, conduct workshops focused on enhancing writing skills, research methods, and creative thinking. This provides all participants with a level playing field and equips them with essential writing tools.

Guest Speakers : Invite authors, educators, or journalists to share insights and tips on effective writing, storytelling, and research techniques.

Post-Contest Workshops : After the contest, offer workshops based on the common areas of improvement noticed in the submissions. This can be an ongoing educational initiative to continuously nurture writing skills.

Leveraging Technology

Online Forums : Create online platforms where students can discuss their ideas, seek peer reviews, and share resources. This fosters a collaborative and interactive learning environment.

Utilizing Writing Software : Introduce students to writing software and online tools that can aid in drafting, editing, and refining their essays. This helps them become more self-sufficient and technologically adept writers.

Online Readings and Discussions : Host virtual events where students can present their essays and participate in discussions. This not only showcases their work but also builds public speaking and presentation skills.

Engaging the Community

Involving parents and guardians.

Workshops for Parents : Conduct sessions for parents on how they can assist their children in the writing process without taking over their work.

Regular Updates : Keep parents informed about contest progress and their children’s involvement, fostering a sense of community investment.

Community Events

Showcase Events : Along with reading events, consider exhibitions or publications (like a booklet or a school magazine) featuring the best essays.

Celebrating All Participants : Acknowledge every participant’s effort, not just the winners, to foster a positive and encouraging atmosphere.

Collaboration with Local Organizations

Partnerships for Resources : Collaborate with organizations for resources like writing guides, access to libraries, and expert talks.

Broader Community Involvement : Engage the broader community in the contest, perhaps through public readings or local media coverage, to celebrate young talent.

Essay writing contests for middle school students are more than just a competition. They are a platform for growth, learning, and self-expression. By organizing these contests thoughtfully and judging them fairly, educators and organizers can make a significant impact on the development of young writers. Remember, the goal is to nurture a generation of thinkers, creators, and communicators who are confident in their ability to express themselves through the written word and do not rely on the best paper writing service platforms.

Such contests equip students with vital skills that will serve them well throughout their academic journey and beyond, laying the foundation for effective communication and creative expression.

Parenting Toolkits

Learning offline is now possible! Download our new Parenting Toolkits today.

• Submissions & Reviews
• Publishing & Journals
• Scholarships
• News & Updates
• Resources Home
• Submittable 101
• Bias & Inclusivity Resources
• Customer Stories
• Get our newsletter
• Request a Demo

Using Rubrics to Review Scholarship and Fellowship Applications

Your institution’s programs are one of a kind—and offering scholarships and fellowships can help you share these assets with a wider community. As you design applications and set up review, remember that the first step in any smart process is the creation of a thorough rubric. Rubrics are detailed outlines for how each application will be read and scored. Using rubrics to review scholarship and fellowship applications helps reviewers stay consistent, minimizes personal bias, and provides a useful reference for everyone involved in the process.

Most commonly created by teachers to assess student performance, rubrics are useful for evaluation processes of all kinds. If you create a rubric before building your application, it can help ensure all requested information is relevant and necessary. This saves time for applicants as well as your team.

According to Brown University’s Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, there are a series of vital considerations for creating a successful review system. Here are six steps they identified, refocused for using rubrics to review scholarship and fellowship applications: 

1. Define the rubric’s purpose

Consider the components of your application and how each should be assessed. What would an outstanding application include? How detailed do you want to be with scoring? Should each application component receive a distinct score?

2. Choose between a holistic and analytic rubric

In terms of basic distinctions, the holistic rubric is easier to put together but offers less detail than an analytic rubric regarding specific strengths and weaknesses within an application. For example, a holistic rubric might ask reviewers to assign a score of 1-4 for the application as a whole (where a Level 1 application includes a high GPA, excellent references, and an outstanding essay). An analytic rubric would assess the GPA, references, and essay using distinct scales and criteria.  

3. Define rubric criteria

These criteria identify each component for assessment. For fellowships and scholarships, common review criteria include:

• Academic achievement (GPA)
• Test scores
• Personal statements
• Resumes or CVs
• Application essays
• Supplemental essays
• Letters of recommendation
• Extracurricular achievements

4. Design the rating scale

Although this could include letter grades, for application review, numeric scores are likely to be the most useful. Most scales include 3-5 rating levels.

5. Write descriptions for each rating

Clarity and consistency of language here will help accurately guide reviewers. Focus on observations that can be accurately measured and include the degree to which criteria are successfully met.

6. Finalize your rubric (for now)

Format your rubric for easy access and reference, assess effectiveness, collect relevant feedback, and revise accordingly. Using rubrics to review scholarship and fellowship applications should involve ongoing updates to your system—a rubric is only as effective as it is relevant to current goals. 

Other considerations

A strong rubric not only helps guide reviewers—it also offers the opportunity to deeply assess and streamline your application. If part of your application didn’t make the rubric, do you really need it to review your candidates?

A few additional rubric strategies to employ:

• Assess your rubric carefully for language that could be misinterpreted. It’s important to avoid assumptions about reviewers, especially regarding how they will process the criteria, rating scale, and descriptions you provide.  
• Steer clear of industry jargon or acronyms. Use plain language and where possible and give examples to solidify what you want to say.
• Determine the relative weight of review criteria. For example, will letters of recommendation be more or less important than GPA? Design your rating scale accordingly.

Sharing your rubric for transparency

Anyone who takes the time to apply for your scholarship or fellowship wants to submit the best possible application. Unfortunately, every application process is different and prospective applicants may not know what your organization is looking for. Sharing clear information about your assessment criteria and timeline is a huge help—and rubrics are a great way to do this.

While you don’t have to show the point system or all of your evaluation guidelines, sharing the main criteria for a successful application established in the rubric benefits everyone involved in your process:

• It demonstrates respect for applicants’ time. When they can access assessment guidelines, applicants know where to focus in assembling their application.
• It increases the appropriateness of applications. Clarity around expectations and review criteria can help you receive more relevant applications, saving your review team time.
• It minimizes questions and doubt. If applicants know what to prioritize in their application, they’re less likely to reach out and inquire. That’s one less email for both of you.
• It spotlights your organization’s values. Using rubrics to review scholarship and fellowship applications (and being willing to share from them) demonstrates that you care about diligent, fair, and consistent review. It also shows that you understand the value this information holds for applicants and you’re prepared to support them.

Being more transparent about your process by sharing the criteria in your rubric sets you apart from other institutions, facilitates trust from potential applicants, and brings clarity to the whole process. Just be sure what you share is easy to access and written in a simple, jargon-free format.

Submittable’s custom review forms are perfect for incorporating your rubric. Looking for scholarship management software or fellowship management software ? Submittable is here to help. For more tips on a fair and efficient scholarship and fellowship review process, check out this guide . 

Rachel Mindell is a Special Projects Editor at Submittable. She also writes and teaches poetry. Connect with her on LinkedIn.

Review together. From anywhere.

Try the trusted submission management platform to collect and review anything, with anyone, from anywhere.

Watch a demo

About Submittable

Submittable powers you with tools to launch, manage, measure and grow your social impact programs, locally and globally. From grants and scholarships to awards and CSR programs, we partner with you so you can start making a difference, fast. The start-to-finish platform makes your workflow smarter and more efficient, leading to better decisions and bigger impact. Easily report on success, and learn for the future—Submittable is flexible and powerful enough to grow alongside your programs.

Submittable is used by more than 11 thousand organizations, from major foundations and corporations to governments, higher education, and more, and has accepted nearly 20 million applications to date.

HOW IT WORKS

Judging Criteria

Essay Contest Framework:

• Entries will be blind judged by members of ICNA NJ and their associates.
• Entries must be in good taste, easy to read, use proper grammar and punctuation, and correct spelling.
• Writing quality, clarity and impact, including organization into introduction, main body and clear conclusion are important.
• Depth of research and analysis including citing of relevant references will be considered.
• Evidence of original thought and creativity on important issues and challenges of race and injustice will be considered.
• Entries should be relevant to current events.

JRMSU – ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES OF ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

ESSAY WRITING COMPETITION Mechanics and Rules

• The Board of judges shall provide topic of the essay at the venue of the competition.
• The contestants shall be given two (2) hours to develop the composition.
• The contestants shall be provided with a pen and a long bondpaper marked with the assigned number duly signed by the contest master. They are prohibited to write their names and the University they are representing.
• No printed materials, electronic gadgets, or storage devices shall be utilized.
• The contestants are prohibited to wear their university uniform or any symbol/s (e.g. ID lanyard) that mark distinction of their respective university.
• Each contestant shall be assigned a number.
• The result of the contest shall be posted on the tally board immediately after the judges have finished rating the contestants’ manuscripts.
• The judges’ decision is final.

CRITERIA FOR JUDGING

DOWNLOAD REGISTRATION FORM

DOWNLOAD CONFIRMATION SLIP

*Adapted from PASUC Guidelines and modified by the host university.