Inside the John Locke Essay Competition: A Former Marker's Guide

Oxbridge Solution · Essay Competitions

The John Locke Essay Competition has become one of the most respected academic essay competitions for ambitious students, and it now attracts tens of thousands of entries from around the world. The following guide draws on the experience of an Oxbridge Solution mentor who worked as an essay marker for the John Locke Institute in 2022, grading entries and training alongside more experienced markers. That work gave a rare view of how essays are actually judged and what separates a shortlisted essay from the rest.

What the competition is, and who it is for

The competition is designed for intellectually curious students who want to extend their work beyond the school curriculum and engage with broad questions in politics, economics, philosophy, law and related subjects. It is a self-driven exercise that pushes your thinking and lets you go into real depth on a topic that interests you, which also strengthens a university application.

Because entries require genuine depth, the competition is most useful for students around the ages of 16 and 17, in the lead-up to applying to university. For those applying to UK universities in the October cycle, the spring beforehand is a strong time to enter, since you will be at the top of your game academically and the ideas you explore will be fresh in your mind, which matters because strong essays can come up in an Oxbridge interview. The competition is global, entries are accepted from anywhere in the world, and the only real requirement is that essays are written in English. It is held in particularly high regard across East Asia, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

The questions

John Locke questions are, by design, extremely broad. They ask you to think about pressing issues within a subject that have no easy answer and can be argued in several directions. Past examples include whether the British Empire was good or bad, and whether the pandemic normalised authoritarianism. The categories typically include economics, history, international relations, law, philosophy, politics, psychology, public policy, science and technology, and theology, usually with three questions per category that offer slightly different angles.

Many questions contain an implicit binary, such as "was it this or that", and one of the most useful early pieces of advice is to challenge that binary rather than accept a black-and-white view. This reflects the ethos of the competition, which rewards the kind of critical, synthesising thinking that is valued at Oxbridge, where hidden assumptions are questioned. If a title does not immediately suggest an answer to you, that is often a good sign, and usually means the question rewards further reading and deeper thought.

How competitive it is

Across all categories, entries run well into the tens of thousands, approaching around fifty thousand of the strongest students globally. Only around ten per cent are shortlisted, so being shortlisted already places you in a high percentile and stands out to academic tutors. Above that sit the subject prizes and the overall winner, and reaching those levels puts you among a tiny fraction of all entries, which is a serious academic achievement. Simply entering, without recognition, adds relatively little, so the real value comes from being recognised at shortlisting level or above.

How essays are marked

The marking process reflects Oxbridge standards at every stage. In the first round, current Oxford and Cambridge students with experience in the relevant subject read through hundreds of essays each and sort them into three buckets, so fail, pass and high pass, against the competition's guidelines. A failing essay usually has a serious weakness, such as poor spelling, punctuation and grammar, weak formatting, or a failure to actually answer the question. Passes are competent but unremarkable. High passes, which the markers aim to be around a fifth of entries, are strong and tick many of the qualities of a good Oxbridge humanities essay.

In the second round, the high passes are split further, and roughly the top third become very high passes. Those are then sent to Oxford and Cambridge academics, professors in the relevant subject, who make the final decisions on prizes. This is why the prizes carry such weight, since the essays are ultimately judged by the same kind of academics who lead research and decide university admissions.

What a shortlisted essay looks like

Strong essays share clear characteristics. They show wide reading, and critically they go beyond textbook introductions to include books that take different approaches and, most importantly, academic articles of the kind found on JSTOR and Google Scholar, which is unusual at the age of 17 and a real distinguishing factor. They answer the question directly, with a strong position clear from the introduction and conclusion. They analyse rather than describe, since a narrative account of a topic will lower the grade. They use a good range of evidence, including primary sources where possible, and they consider the reliability of that evidence. Above all, they avoid a black-and-white position and work a nuanced, sometimes unexpected line of argument through the whole essay to reach an interesting conclusion. To be shortlisted, you need to be writing well above the level of a typical 17-year-old, closer to a strong first-year undergraduate.

How to prepare

Preparation matters, because the standard at the top is high. Reading widely and deeply is the single most important step, and knowing what to read is often the hardest part for a 16 or 17-year-old, since even at university students are given reading lists by academics. Relying on a general search or a language model tends to produce the same reading list as everyone else, so the strongest entries read more widely than that. This is where structured guidance helps, whether from a school teacher who will read a draft, or from a tutor who can shape a reading list, point you toward less obvious sources, walk you through an unfamiliar and unstructured task, critique your plan, and proofread your drafts for the small errors that are easy to miss after many rereadings. Support of this kind also helps level the field for students at international schools outside the UK, and the winners' lists regularly include students from schools around the world, so success is very achievable for international applicants.

Why it matters for your application

Doing well in the John Locke competition shows an Oxbridge admissions tutor that you have excelled in the same kind of essay, judged by the same criteria, that you would be doing at Oxford or Cambridge. If you are an enthusiastic student who wants to stand out, it will stretch your thinking and strengthen your application. Work hard, think carefully about what you read, develop a nuanced plan that avoids uncritical assumptions and takes an interesting line of argument, and review your essay thoroughly so it is free of errors.