lse essay writing competition 2022

LSEUPR Annual Essay Competition

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Each year we hold an essay competition for students who are yet to complete their A-Levels, IB or equivalent, i.e. those entering years 12 and 13, or equivalent. This year the essay question is “What is the most important lesson governments can learn from the Covid-19 epidemic?” and the deadline is 1 October. The essay should be no more than 1,000 words long, in order to not detract from the students’ studies, but could also be completed over the summer break. This essay competition was created to act as an outreach effort by the LSEUPR and as an opportunity to expose A-Level and equivalent students to university-style writing assignments in a relevant and engaging way, having recognised the desire for this during our own time at school. In addition, this presents an ideal piece of experience and name recognition for students wishing to apply to university to include within their UCAS personal statements. Exact details of the competition including how to apply can be found at the link below. Prizes are as follows: 1st Place Prize: £100 Amazon Voucher Certificate signed by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, Head of the LSE Department of Government Essay published in the LSE Undergraduate Political Review blog The opportunity to attend and to present your essay at the LSEUPR Annual Conference 2nd Place Prize: £50 Amazon Voucher Certificate signed by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, Head of the LSE Department of Government Essay published in the LSEUPR blog 3rd Place Prize: £25 Amazon Voucher Certificate signed by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey, Head of the LSE Department of Government Essay published in the LSEUPR blog

Other Criteria

Each year we hold an essay competition for students who are yet to complete their A-Levels, IB or equivalent, i.e. those entering years 12 and 13, or equivalent. Do not apply if you do not fit into this age threshold.

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There are several types of writing at university: notes from lectures or texts, project work, blogging or journal writing. At LSE, you will very likely be asked to write an essay at some point. Here are few things to think about to get ready for writing an academic essay.

An essay is your written response to a question or topic (that is usually set by a course teacher). For the vast majority of questions you'll encounter, there is no “right” or “wrong” answer. In a good essay, the writer takes a position and proposes an argument to justify the position. This is part of writing "critically", where you

• explain your understanding or interpretation of an idea or issue,
• take a clear position, with respect to a specific idea or issue,
• support your position with sound evidence, referring to research, theories, and scholars' work in your field,
• compare, contrast, and evaluate others’ views and indicate whether you agree with these views or challenge them, 
• draw conclusions and recognise the implications of your conclusions. 

Two important things to think about as you write essays are the question itself and the structure of your response.

Question the question!

Analyse the language of your essay question/topic carefully in order to interpret it thoroughly and think about what you're being asked to do. 

• Read every single word of the question carefully. Avoid taking questions and statements at their face value and jumping to conclusions about what a question might mean.
• Note key technical terms or phrases in the question that could have different interpretations in the your field of study.
• The instruction “discuss” is common at LSE. It means write about a topic in detail, taking into account different issues or ideas. It does not mean write everything you know about the subject.
• Having a position does not mean that there is a clear cut “yes” or “no” answer. “It depends” is OK too!  Your essay could be about what it depends on, how you know, and why that is interesting

Mind your structure!

In your essays, try to present a clear, logical argument that flows in a coherent and convincing way.

• First, let your reader know what you’re doing and what you have to say concisely (introduction). Then, say what you have to say, building each element carefully and in detail (body). Finally, re-iterate what you had to say and give some indication of why it is interesting or important (conclusion).
• Remember that you are trying to make a point by building an argument.  A logical argument that conveys a clear point is quite different from a general description that simply repeats ideas you have encountered in your reading.  Beware of this difference! 

Want to learn more about writing at university? Check out LSE LIFE's Moodle page .  Moodle is an online platform where many of the resources from your courses can be found. If you don't have your LSE user account set up yet, select the Login as Guest option. 

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LSE Economics Society Essay Competition

20th June 2017

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We love enrichment opportunities at Tutor2u so news reaching us of an essay competition for sixth form students organised by the team at the London School of Economics is music to our ears! Here are the details of the essay titles for the 2017 challenge!

About the LSE SU Economics Society 

The LSE SU Economics Society is one of the largest student societies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the only one officially supported by the LSE’s Economics Department. This year they are introducing an essay competition for sixth form students  both to promote LSE and provide an avenue through which students can explore interesting questions beyond their syllabuses. 

Here are the questions for 2017:

• Can Economics tell us anything about how we can try to prevent war?
• Imagine that in front of you is a Big Red button. If you press the button, everyone in the world would have their wealth magically equalised. Would you press the button? Explain the economic reasoning behind your decision
• Discuss the effect of the rise of ad blocker software on the Internet – is it a blessing or a curse?
• ‘Free trade is a necessary evil’. How far do you agree?
• ‘On a societal level, University Education is inefficient – for most people, it hardly makes them better at their future jobs, but it comes at a huge opportunity cost because students miss out from entering a career earlier. Most people who go to university only do so because they’d be left behind in the job market if they didn’t go and everyone else did’. With reference to this argument, should the government drastically limit the number of university places available? 
• First prize: £125 Amazon voucher
• Runner-Up (2nd and 3rd place): £75 Amazon voucher
• 4th and 5th place: £25 Amazon voucher

In addition, the top three entries will also be included in Rationale, our economics magazine, which is widely read both across LSE and online, by many hundreds of our members. All shortlisted entires will receive certificates.

Poster to download from this link

• Entries should be around 1500 words long, and preferably not more than 2000 words
• Entry is open to students in their final two years of secondary school, or in sixth form college (including students taking A-Level and IB courses, as well as any equivalent course)
• All work must be the entrant’s original content, and must have been produced solely for this competition
• Students may choose their own titles different from those listed above, but they must still adhere to the rule that work is produced solely for this competition
• Entrants do not need to have studied economics at school in order to enter, but they should still try to make sure that their essay is heavily rooted in economics
• Entrants are allowed to ask for a limited amount of help from teachers if they are stuck, but we discourage this as much as possible. When you submit the essay you will be required to declare exactly how much help you received on the essay
• Entrants are allowed to submit more than one essay for the competition, should they wish

How to send through your entry

Entries should be emailed to this email address

( [email protected] )

The final deadline for essays is 1st August 2017

Here is an update from the LSE team (June 2017)

"We have managed to enlist the help of Prof. Christopher Pissarides (Regius Professor at LSE and 2010 Nobel Laureate) to be our final judge for the competition - he will choose our winners and runners up out of our shortlisted entries. Therefore, the essay competition now gives students the opportunity to have their work marked and critiqued by a Nobel Prizewinner. He will also sign the certificates which we give to our shortlisted entries."

Geoff Riley

Geoff Riley FRSA has been teaching Economics for over thirty years. He has over twenty years experience as Head of Economics at leading schools. He writes extensively and is a contributor and presenter on CPD conferences in the UK and overseas.

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April 1st, 2022

Essay writing: from selection to submission.

0 comments | 1 shares

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

With LSE students either coming off the back of a hefty deadline season, or the fast-approaching summer exam season (or for a few, both may be the case), now is a good time as any to think about essay writing at university-level and the steps it involves.

Before I start, I have to put in the huge disclaimer that I am by no means an expert nor are these tips necessarily applicable to all subjects and scenarios. These are merely suggestions based on what I’ve learnt so far and reflections on the process I personally take as an anthropology student when it comes to tackling an essay. I continue to modify and am learning as time goes on so this is by no means a perfected skill of mine (far from it)! There is no one way to write an essay. How you write essays depends from course to marking requirements to personal preference.

With all this being said, here are the 5 different parts to my process of writing a non-timed constrained essay.

1) picking a question.

I don’t know what it’s like for other courses but in Anthropology, we often get a choice of questions (5-10 depending on whether it’s a formative/summative and half/full unit). To decide what question to pick, I start by narrowing down and disregarding the ones that stand out as definite no’s . This leaves a few that are ‘potentials’ .

In order to decide which of these to do, I go back through the course content. By this I mean going through the lecture slides of the required weeks for that question again to refamilarise myself with the main ideas, concepts and takeaways from that week(s).

Lecture slides don’t take too long to go through, but at the same time, they provide a nice overview and help make links between weeks. Following this, it becomes a lot easier to decide which question I feel most confident answering.

1b) Synthesis

Once the question has been decided, we turn to how we can make the answer well thought through. To do this, I create a word document where I ‘dump’ all information, readings- anything I find (throughout the process of deciding the question) in a single place. Lecture notes, class notes, reading notes and any ideas that are sparked whilst going through this material are all placed in this dump.

From the collated knowledge, I try to construct a *very* broad outline of what sorts of arguments I could make based on what themes constantly arise and what points stand out to me. Doing this outline also identifies the gaps in reading materials.

2) Readings

Once the synthesis has been done, the focus is on the readings. For our anthropology course, most weeks there are 2/3 essential readings so at least one, but most likely both/all, of these readings are guaranteed to be in your essay.

The first task then is identifying the relevant week(s) and readings for your question (this is inevitably done in steps 1-2). After knowing where your essential readings fit into your argument, you turn to the further readings and readings from other weeks to make up the rest of your essay.

As I mentioned, the broad plan helps you figure out what readings need to be done for the essay. So, step three is reading and notes on the readings required for your essay that you are yet to do.

Once you’ve done all your readings, the next step is to plan. People have varying preferences and degrees to which they plan but for me, planning is essential. It helps me to figure out what I am going to say and the process I am going to take to get there.

For me, it is really where the ‘hard thinking’ happens. It’s where I figure out what my argument is properly. Most crucially, it’s where I figure out how I’m going to structure my essay in a way that builds my argument. I always find that the more detailed and clearer my plan is, the easier the writing of my essay becomes.

Notably, as part of my plan, I also go through all the readings and pick out the quotes I want to use in my essay. These quotes are all placed into a new document and organised based on which paragraph they are relevant to. Organising the quotes in advance greatly reduces the writing time.

The next step is writing. Having done all the hard work already, writing for me really comes near the end. It’s about taking all the ideas and executing them as intended and in a comprehensible way. Organised quotes and a detailed plan means writing doesn’t take as long as it otherwise would. This also helps make the writing process less stressful and more enjoyable.

The final steps are editing and formatting. Editing is essential. My teachers would always tell me to do it in school, but it was only when I got to university that I realised why they kept telling me to do it and how important it is.

Not thinking too much about making the first draft perfect removes a lot of the friction involved with starting to write an essay. Telling yourself you can come back and edit it not only gets you through the first draft but also makes your essay better in the long run.

Editing is where I get rid of repetition (something I tend to do a lot when writing). It is also where I can rephrase overly wordy sentences and cut out unnecessary ones. I used to struggle with cutting out what was not relevant but having a word count has simplified this task for me. Finally, of course, we need to reference and format before submitting!

This is my process of writing essays in non-timed conditions. I hope someone can take at least parts of this process if they feel it works and include it to their process. Even if not, I hope this was insightful to see one person’s approach. As disclaimed, this is not a one size fit all and essay writing is a personal and everchanging process.

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Master's students Essay Competition on Capitalism

Publishing outstanding us related work  from lse master's students, the lse phelan us centre's essay competition sought 1000-word articles from current lse master's students on capitalism and the united states..

"How should the United States work to shape the future of capitalism in this age of insecurity?"

How should the United States work to shape the future of capitalism in this age of insecurity? There is a growing belief that free market capitalism isn’t working and needs to be reformed. While global markets have lifted billions of people out of poverty since the 1990s, markets have also fueled growing inequality, economic insecurity, and populist backlashes in rich and poor nations. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the return of great power rivalry, pressures to 'de-couple', 'de-globalise' and 're-shore' trade and investment have accelerated. Disenchantment with global capitalism is spreading. 

In January 2024 the Phelan US Centre issued a call for entries from LSE Master's students to write a 1000-word essay on capitalism and the United States with the prompt: " How should the United States work to shape the future of capitalism in this age of insecurity? " Students were encouraged to interpret this prompt from a variety of perspectives, and with an interdisciplinary focus. 

Submitted essays were judged by a panel of Phelan US Centre staff and LSE academics.

The winning entry and runners up were published on the  LSE United States Politics and Policy Blog (USAPP) . With over half a million visitors every year this is an excellent chance for LSE students to publish their original work on the United States to a wider audience. 

Essay competition winner

To save global capitalism, the US needs to focus on the ‘places that don’t matter.’ - David Millman - LSE Department of Geography and the Environment

Read David Millman's winning essay on the US Centre's USAPP blog.

Essay competition runners-up

Beyond basic: The transformative power of guaranteed income -  Yazmin Baptiste - LSE Department of Methodology

• Read Yazmin Baptiste's runner up essay on the US Centre's USAPP blog

Capitalism 2.0: Pre-distribution, not just redistribution - Manickam Valliappan - LSE Department of Geography and Environment

• Read Manickam Valliappan's runner up essay on the US Centre's USAPP blog

Presentation   to the British-American Parliamentary Group in the UK Parliament

In March 2024, David Millman presented his essay in Parliament to The Rt. Hon. Ranil Jayawardena, MP, Lord Fox and Lord Elliott, members of the  British-American Parliamentary Group  (BAPG). This was followed up with a Q&A session with BAPG members, the essay competition winner, and the runners up, Yazmin Baptiste and Manickam Valliappan.

Watch the Phelan US Centre video featuring the 2023 climate change essay competition winner and runners-up

Thanks to all those who entered. For more information about future competitions and Centre events, please subscribe to our  termly newsletter .

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