College Essay Contest - The Theme and the Panel

College Essay Contest - The Theme and the PanelWe recently announced that our second College Essay Contest is being held this year at the site: NewsReview.com. The purpose of this contest is to determine the winner of the $10,000 grand prize for a college essay that best summarizes the topic of the college essay contest and which best relates to the theme of the contest.This year's site: NewsReview.com College Essay Contest is set up in a slightly different way than we used last year's contest. This year, a panel of three judges will make their recommendations to the readers of the contest after reviewing all the entries that were submitted. The winners of the contest will be the ones whose essays will meet with the judges' approval and which will have the most number of 'thumbs-up' ratings from other readers of the site.There are two new features this year, which should help the panel members to be a little more objective in their judging. One is the introduction to the judging pane l which tells readers about the qualifications of the judges.Then, the judges are made up of a one term 'thematic essays' reviewer and one general fiction reviewer. The editorial guidelines for these judges also have been updated this year as well.This is certainly not a new concept for a college essay contest, but we believe it's a very effective way to run a contest because it enables us to bring in the real judges. We've had some experience with this sort of contest before, as we did one a few years ago at The Onion.com. After several years, the judges were replaced with faux judges.Because of this, the bloggers could have a say in the proceedings without having to worry about being overtly biased by their writing ability. So, using that example, the college essay contest jury could be comprised of someone whose only claim to fame is their blogging experience; a person who has a background in journalism or the news industry; or someone who has written extensively on college essay s and at least has a background in the topic at hand.This is just one of the many reasons why we feel it's so important to have people who know what they're doing involved in the college essay judging process. There is a great deal of judgment to be rendered when judging college essays, and it's hard to see how any organization would choose an amateur to provide a true representation of the various essays submitted.We encourage college students and other authors to submit their essays to the site: NewsReview.com for the next college essay contest. For the last few years, we've seen some very great essays come through the site, and for that reason, we intend to continue the contest for at least another year.