St Hugh’s College runs annual Sixth Form Essay Competitions in the following subject areas: History, Classical Reception, and PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics).
These prize competitions are a fantastic opportunity to explore a topic of interest in a particular subject in more depth – whether something you have studied at school has inspired you, or whether you are keen to broaden your horizons in a new academic discipline.
Our 2025 competitions are now open for entries!
To find out more about these competitions, please visit the individual prize webpages using the links below.
. 
The Gwyneth Bebb Law Essay Competition, which ran in 2023 and 2024, will unfortunately not go ahead in 2025. For information about this prize, and details of last year’s winners, please click on the box below.
If you have a query about entering one of our competitions, please check the Frequently Asked Questions below in the first instance before contacting us over email. Please note that due to the volume of email queries we receive, we will only respond to those that are not already answered by the below information.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, international students are welcome to enter our competitions.
To be eligible to enter, you must currently be studying at the equivalent level of the UK Sixth Form (please see the next FAQ for additional details on this).
In addition, to be eligible to enter the Kavita Singh PPE Essay Competition, you must be studying at a state-funded (i.e. non-fee-paying) school or college (this criterion does not apply to the Julia Wood and Mary Renault competitions).
In the UK, ‘Sixth Form’ refers to the final two years of school before university level study. To enter, you must be studying at this level (regardless of the terminology used in your home country).
For guidance, students in Sixth Form are typically aged between 16-18. However, eligibility to enter our competitions does not depend on your age, but rather your educational level.
Yes, as a gap year student you are eligible to enter, provided that you have not yet undertaken any additional formal education beyond Sixth Form level.
Students who have already begun university level study are not eligible to enter.
No, students who are not yet studying at Sixth Form level are not eligible to enter.
The choice of topic for the Julia Wood and Mary Renault competitions is entirely up to you. We are not able to provide guidance or advice on the suitability of specific topics.
For the 2025 competitions, the deadline for entering is 2pm (BST) on Wednesday 23rd July 2025. Entries received after this point will not be considered.
You are strongly encouraged to complete your submission well in advance of this deadline, to ensure that you have time to request assistance in the event of any technical issues. We may not be able to respond to individual queries received too close to the deadline.
Essays should be between 2000 and 4000 words in length.
This includes any material in footnotes which is additional commentary or content related to your essay, and any figure or image captions. The bibliography, and any references or citations provided in footnotes, are not included in the word count.
As with any piece of academic writing, entrants are expected to clearly reference any material used to support their arguments, providing full details of their sources. You are welcome to use whichever style of referencing you prefer. The bibliography, and any references or citations provided in footnotes, are not included in the word count.
Yes, you may include images in your essay. If you use an image which is not your own, make sure to reference its source.
No, we are only able to accept essay entries written in English.
Yes, you are welcome to enter more than one of our competitions if you would like to.
The winners will be selected in August. All entrants will then be contacted via email and informed of the outcome of their entry. Subsequently, the names and essays of the winners will be published on our website.
Due to the number of entries we receive, we are unfortunately unable to provide feedback on individual essays.
