The Essay Competition, by the rules
A complete fact sheet for the 2026 LSESU Economics Society Essay Competition — eligibility, format, the six-criterion rubric, integrity rules, and submission. Free to enter with no registration, written in English, judged by LSE Economics Department professors. One essay per entrant, hard deadline 1 September 2026.
Who can submit an essay
The Essay Competition is intentionally open. No nationality restriction, no school nomination process, no prior economics requirement, and no entry fee. The only structural constraint is that each candidate may submit one essay only.
Grade range
Students in grades 9 through 12 (US system) or the equivalent year in IB, A-level, AP, Chinese gaokao, or any other recognised national high-school programme. UK Year 10 through Year 13 is the standard equivalent.
Nationality & location
No restriction. The competition has drawn submissions from more than sixty countries since 2017. International entrants submit via the WhatsApp submission link in the same way as entrants inside mainland China; the judging pool is single and global.
Entry mode
Individual submissions only. No team-authored essays, no shared submissions. Each candidate selects exactly one of the five 2026 questions and writes one essay; multiple submissions from the same candidate are disqualified.
Prerequisites & fee
No prior economics study required, no specific maths background required, no school recommendation needed. Entry is completely free. The Society does not charge candidates and does not accept payment for any expedited handling.
1500 words, Harvard, Times 12pt
The format requirements below are not stylistic preferences — they are the published specification. Submissions that breach any of them are returned for resubmission before the deadline, and if the deadline has passed, are not assessed.
Six criteria, summing to 100
The rubric is published in advance and applied uniformly by every judge. Originality of argument is weighted most heavily (25 points); strict relevance to the chosen prompt is the lowest weight (5) but a strong essay that does not actually answer the question cannot win.
Plagiarism and AI-generated content are forbidden
Every submission is screened automatically on receipt — once for plagiarism against a corpus of published economics writing, and once for AI-generated content using current detection tools. Submissions that fail either screen are disqualified immediately. There is no appeal channel for integrity disqualifications.
No AI-generated text
Any sustained passage produced by a large language model — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or equivalent — is treated as a breach. Using AI as a thesaurus or to debug a sentence is fine; using it to draft the argument is not.
No plagiarism
Quoted text must be in quotation marks and cited; paraphrased ideas must be cited to the original source. Recycling your own prior published work without disclosure is also a breach.
No ghostwriting
The essay must be the candidate’s own work. A teacher or coach may read drafts and offer feedback; they may not write or rewrite the prose. Joint authorship is not permitted in any form.
A note on detection accuracy. No automatic tool is perfect, and a borderline detection result is reviewed manually by a human assessor before disqualification is confirmed. Candidates who feel a detection result was incorrect should contact the support team within five working days; the Society maintains a single review channel, not a public appeal process.
One deadline, no extensions
Hard deadline
1 September 2026, 23:59 GMT+1 (London summer time). Converted to other zones for reference: 2 September 06:59 Beijing time, 1 September 18:59 New York EDT.
There is no extension policy. Late submissions are not accepted under any circumstances — illness, technical failure on the candidate’s side, school examination clashes, time-zone confusion, and travel disruption are all foreseeable risks that candidates are expected to manage. The Society will not delay the global deadline for individual cases.
Results release
Anticipated in October 2026 after blind double-marking, expert moderation, and final ratification by the Society’s editorial committee. The exact date is announced publicly and on WhatsApp once judging is complete.
How to submit
There is no registration and no web portal. When your essay is ready, message the Society on WhatsApp and we send you the submission link and the file-naming reminder; you then send your essay through that link. Submissions sent by any unofficial channel are not assessed. Schools may submit a whole cohort the same way, over WhatsApp.
Confirmation
Once your essay is received we confirm it on WhatsApp, in the same chat you used to request the link. If you do not see a confirmation, message us again before the deadline — do not wait until the last moment to resolve any issue.
Message us on WhatsApp →Five rules questions
For award tiers and certificate detail see awards; for the master catalogue see the FAQ page.
What happens if I exceed 1500 words?
May my teacher read a draft before I submit?
Can I use AI tools at any stage of the process?
Can I submit in PDF or Word format?
If my submission is disqualified, can I appeal?
If the rules check out, the next step is your essay
There is no registration and no entry fee. All five 2026 prompts are already public — on this site and the Society’s official page — so you can choose your question and start writing today. When your essay is ready, message us on WhatsApp for the submission link. The hard deadline is 1 September 2026 — most entrants write between mid-June and late August.
