Studybay Essay Contest ► Prize $5000 ► Essay Competition Scholarship 2023

How to Enter

Compose your piece

Choose one of the topics listed below and get writing! Make sure to carefully follow the guidelines laid out on this page.

Submit your piece

Once you’ve finished and proofread your essay, it’s time to submit it! Please make sure to fill out the accompanying application correctly.

Provide us with proof of enrollment

Finalists will be asked to provide verifiable proof showing that they attend college.

Since 2011, we’ve supported students from around the world, helping them towards academic achievement—but students have supported us, too, trusting us with their work. Now, we’d like to give back more to the community and help students in need of financial aid with our scholarship essay competitions!

Sharing is Сaring

The more contestants the merrier. Let us know if you'd like to support our essay scholarship contest and tell about it on your socials or even write and post an article about it. Please, contact us, and we will make this collaboration even more beneficial for both sides.

[email protected]

Contest Topic and Information

To win one of our essay contest scholarships, you will be required to write on one of the below topics. Now is the chance to prove your writing skills, so make time to fully research your essay question before you start writing.

Future of AI: Fascinating or Terrifying?
Distractions Everywhere: Is E-Learning Effective?
How Media Affects Culture
Why Do People Fall for Fake News
Which Literary Work Do You Think Is Most Culturally Significant, and Why?
Why Life Skills Should Be Taught in School
How Do You Keep Pace with an Ever-Changing World?
The Dangers of Social Media
Has Cancel Culture Gone Too Far?

As you can see, our short essay scholarships are on a range of fascinating, current topics, at least one of which is bound to be of interest to you. Additionally, we have purposefully made our essay questions quite broad so that you can put your own spin on your paper. Simply choose the one that interests you the most and start writing!

Please note that there is no one topic on this list that will make you more likely to win; we’re only interested in your essay-writing abilities.

Submission Rules

Before submitting your paper to our scholarship writing contest, ensure that you meet all the below requirements. If you do not, then you will not be eligible for our scholarship award.

Deadline

The deadline for Studybay’s 2023 college scholarship essay contest is July 1, 2023, just before the beginning of the fall semester. Applications made past this date will not be considered.

Essay Subjects

As a reminder, your essay must be on one of the nine topics outlined above. Paper scholarships will not be granted to graduate students whose essays deviate from these four topics.

Aside from this, a student’s chosen subject will have no bearing on the outcome of our writing scholarship contest. Essays on any of the four topics have an equal chance of winning essay grants from Studybay.

Scholarship Money Payment

Our scholarship winners and runners-up will receive a one-time payment made directly to them within five days after our decision is taken.

Requirements

We will only accept submissions to our writing scholarship contests from:

Graduating high school seniors and undergraduate and graduate students.
Applicants 18 years of age and above.
Applicants must be enrolled full-time at an accredited college, community college, or high school.
Essay submissions for our college scholarship essay contests must provide some information about the school you attend.

Winning Essays

Winning papers will be posted on our short essay scholarships page. We will also promote these essays across our social media accounts to inspire and encourage students to apply in the future.

Submit Your Essay

Essay Guidelines

Participants should remember several rules before writing their essays.

Eligibility

The purpose of our scholarship is to support students. As such, we will only accept essay competition scholarship applications from current college students and graduating high school students pursuing higher education.

Students interested in entering one of our college essay competitions will have to be able to provide proof of their college attendance.

Requirements

As well as meeting the above eligibility requirements, students must ensure that their work meets the below criteria.

Submissions must be on one of the following nine topics:

Future of AI: Fascinating or Terrifying?
Distractions Everywhere: Is E-Learning Effective?
How Media Affects Culture
Why Do People Fall for Fake News
Which Literary Work Do You Think Is Most Culturally Significant, and Why?
Why Life Skills Should Be Taught in School
How Do You Keep Pace with an Ever-Changing World?
The Dangers of Social Media
Has Cancel Culture Gone Too Far?

Submissions must be between 550 and 1000 words.
Submissions must be written either in American English or British English.
Submissions must be 100% free of plagiarism.
Plagiarism Checker https://studybay.com/plagiarism-checker/
Submissions must be in either .doc or .docx format. Essays submitted in other formats will not be considered.
Submissions must adhere to MLA formatting rules. Works Cited must also be formatted in accordance with MLA guidelines.
At least three sources should be listed on the Works Cited page.
Submission file names should be formatted: “Studybay Annual Essay Contest_Your Surname.”

Evaluation

A council of five experts will evaluate your work. All essays submitted to our essay writing scholarships contests will be graded based on five important criteria:

Referencing (worth 10 points)

Your essay must use the appropriate referencing method (i.e., MLA).

Grammar, punctuation, and spelling (worth 20 points)

Your work must be free of grammatical mistakes, punctuation errors, and misspellings.

Structure (worth 20 points)

Your submission must be laid out in a logical, organized fashion that makes sense to the reader.

Content (worth 20 points)

Your ideas must be presented coherently and founded on thorough research. There must be no misinformation in your work.

Language and style (worth 20 points)

Your essay should show an advanced understanding of language and linguistic style.

All applications to our writing contest scholarships will be evaluated based on these guidelines. Ensure that you proofread your essay upon completion and make any edits necessary. We would also encourage you to start your piece well in advance of the deadline to ensure that you can submit a polished version of your essay.

Frequently Asked Question

I have submitted my essay but haven’t received a reply. How can I double-check that you have my piece?

If you submitted your piece by the given deadline and haven’t received a reply, you can reach out to our customer support team to ensure that we received your application. Our customer support team can be reached either through email ([email protected]) or through our website’s live chat service. Also, you should make sure that you haven’t missed the deadline and have met all the requirements.

When can I reapply if I miss the deadline?

If you missed this year’s opportunity to win one of our scholarships with essays and are still in financial need, you can reapply to our contest in 2024. We would encourage you to keep an eye open for next year’s essay topics so that you can get an early start and, hopefully, meet the deadline.

What can I submit as proof of my academic status?

When submitting your application, you will be asked to provide proof of your college enrollment, whether a high school, undergraduate, or graduate student. For this purpose, you can submit your college transcript, a scan of your college identity card, or a copy of your college tuition bill. If you would like to enquire about another method, reach out to our customer support staff to make sure it’s viable.

How can I find out more about my essay’s evaluation?

Essay scholarships require a lot of hard work on the part of the student. Your essay must meet several important criteria to stand a chance of winning.

Regardless of your results, you may wish for greater insight into your marks. If you’d like to request further information about your grade—e.g., the total number of points won, whether any mistakes caused you to lose points, etc.—reach out to our customer support team.

Do you check for AI content in essays?

We do, indeed. We will use an AI detector and our own software to analyze all of the essays.Please bear in mind that an essay for our contest must be your original work. It should not contain any content generated by ChatGPT or any other AI content generator.

If I took part last year, can I still reapply?

If you took part in a previous college scholarship essay-writing contest, you can still take part in future competitions. You will still have to meet the same requirements and will be required to submit proof of enrollment once again. If your previous application was not successful, be sure to consider the feedback your last essay received carefully before working on your new submission.

Can previous winners take part again?

Winners of our creative writing scholarships and other scholarship contests are still permitted to take part in our annual scholarship competitions. The same requirements and rules apply to previous winners of the contest. If you do not truly need the money, we would encourage you to consider not applying to allow someone else the chance to win and further their career in higher education.

Will the essay prompts change or stay the same?

Our essay prompts will change every year. This helps to diversify and draw students' attention to new problems. Also, it makes the competition for the main prizes more fair for beginners and those who have already written last year's essay.
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If you have taken part in scholarships writing contest and wish to do so again, be sure to check our website to see what essay topics we will accept. Likewise, if you miss the current competition deadline, you can still take part in next year’s contest with one of our new topics.

Studybay Annual Essay Contest 2023