Upper Sixth Economics students enjoyed a successful start to the new academic year with a number of them receiving their certificates and medals having achieved success in an international essay competition towards the end of last term. The school had a record number of economics students (eleven in total) shortlisted for a major international essay competition.
Each year the New College of the Humanities run an essay writing competition open to Lower Sixth students. The title was ‘How has the Covid-19 pandemic impacted inequalities?’. Students made use of a wide range of sources to investigate how the pandemic had impacted inequalities in areas such as income, wealth, education, health and gender both within the UK and further afield. They gained experience by working alongside an academic from UCL who was also impressed by the quality of the submissions.
Congratulations go to Ralph Harrison, Christian Tomlin, Christian Jacob-King, Julius Eichborn, Phineas Horan, Sisekna Limbu, Romiya Rai, Chelsy Bunse, Valeriia Bykova, Elias Nage and Miraj Gurung for being shortlisted (from over 6,000 entries) in this international essay competition. This means that the pupils were all placed within the top 10% of entrants with a number going beyond this to reach ‘Finalist’ (top 5%). Phineas Horan, Ralph Harrison, Romiya Rai and Elias Nagel all reached the top 5%. All the pupils were invited to an awards ceremony which took place in London at the end of July.
Christian Tomlin, Upper Sixth pupil, said “The experience of the competition has helped me to learn and develop my research skills, having to find and use secondary sources and then accurately footnote them has been a useful skill I have learnt that will be helpful in university. Another skill I learnt whilst writing my essay for the competition was finding the deeper meaning and having a better understanding of the topic I was writing about.”
Bibek Gurung, an Old Lawrentian studying Accounting and Finance at the University of Reading and who took part in the competition in a previous year said “I found that by taking part in the essay writing competition and learning about academic writing skills, it really helped my transition to my undergraduate course. It helped to prepare me for academic work at university.”
Mr Brown, Head of Economics and Business said “I am very proud of all of our economics students for taking part in such a challenging competition. To be demonstrating undergraduate skills in the lower sixth demonstrates how resilient our students are and also demonstrates the level of intellectual curiosity which they have. For eleven of our students to be shortlisted (around half of those who entered whereas the competition shortlists only 10% of all entries) is a remarkable achievement and something we are all very proud of. ”
More information on the competition can be found below:
https://www.nchlondon.ac.uk/pre-university-programmes/essay/
