The Emerson Prize: The Concord Review

We believe that the pursuit of academic excellence in secondary schools should be given the same attention as the pursuit of excellence in sports and other extracurricular activities, and we have found that many students do exemplary work in history.

The Concord Review is the only quarterly journal in the world to publish the academic research papers of secondary students.

We encourage you to submit your history paper for consideration by TCR.

Submit history papers also to TCR's National Writing Board to be assessed against an independent academic expository writing standard endorsed by Harvard, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford, Virginia, Yale, and 33 other selective colleges and universities.

The Emerson Prize is awarded annually to students published in The Concord Review during the previous academic year who have shown outstanding promise in history at the high school level. Since 1995, 177 students have won an Emerson Prize.

Once you have completed the application and clicked "confirm" you will receive a logon and password via email.  When you pay you will get full access to your account and a Member Activation email. Membership plans vary from $70.00 - $150.00 USD. 

We need the best history papers we can find, and we welcome a chance to consider your best work.

Essay Requirements

• You may submit a paper to The Concord Review if you completed the paper before finishing secondary school.
• You must be the sole author.
  (Note: Work Not Done by the Author, if Discovered, Can Result in Withdrawal of College Admission.)
• The paper must be in English and may not have been previously published except in a publication of a secondary school that you attended.
• Essays should be in the 4,000-6,000 (or more) word range, with Turabian (Chicago) endnotes and bibliography. The longest paper we have published was 21,000 words (on the Mountain Meadows Massacre).
• Essays may be on any historical topic, ancient or modern, domestic or foreign, and must be submitted electronically. 
• Essays should have the notes and bibliography placed at the end (Chicago Style). Use only Arabic numerals for endnotes, not Roman numerals. URLs in endnotes should have the accessed date noted per Turabian style. All endnotes should end with a period.
• Use only one single font family (e.g., Times or New Baskerville, but not both) throughout.  You may use any font styles (bold, italic, superscript, etc.) within that single font family. If you need non-english characters or diacritics not available in your main font, you may use other fonts for the instance of a non-english word or diacritic.
• Do not break any line in the middle using a carriage return. Only use returns to end paragraphs.
• The Concord Review does not publish charts, photos, graphs or other graphics in essays.  Please remove them before submitting.
• Files must be in MS Word or RTF format only. We do not accept Apple Pages, GoogleDocs, PDF, etc.  You must convert them to MS Word or RTF before submitting.
• [NEW] The filename of your document should be your first and last name followed by an underscore and the first 3 words (ONLY) of your essay title.   Include spaces, etc.  Use an underscore in place of a colon in the filename. DO NOT INCLUDE COMMAS or any other punctuation.
• For example, if your name is Marie Jones, and your essay is titled, "The Founding Fathers: Some Bicentennial Reflections" then your filename would be:
• CORRECT:
• Marie Jones_The Founding Fathers.docx
• WRONG:
•  thefoundingfathers.docx
• historypaperforMrSmith, purposes, methods, and devices through time.PDF

• Submit only one file.  Endnotes and Bibliography should be included at the end of the essay document.

• Please complete our online Submission form (below) and then pay the submission fee (see prices below) after completing the form. 
  The author will receive the next four issues of the journal's  Electronic Edition.  For an additional fee plus shipping and handling, the author can receive the next four issues of the Print Edition.

We will typeset papers in InDesign here.

For issues regarding the application form, file formats, etc. contact membership@tcr.org

For more information about the content of your essay contact fitzhugh@tcr.org

Acceptance Procedure

Essays are accepted on a "rolling admissions" basis. Authors whose essays will be published are notified by letter the month before their paper comes out. The Concord Review is published quarterly, and issues arrive in September, December, March and June. Essays are eligible for at least the next four issues. We publish about 5% of the papers we get. A guideline:

Author Benefits

Each author who submits a paper and submission fee, receives the next four issues of the journal in eBook form.  For an additional $30 plus shipping costs, authors may receive the Print Edition of the journal.  Authors may purchase copies of the issue in which his or her essay is published in our bookstore.  Individual reprints of their published essay (TCR Singles) can be created with a minimum order of 12 copies.  Many authors have included their reprints with their college application materials. The Concord Review is the first and only journal in the world which publishes the academic work of secondary students, so our reprints usually make a distinctive contribution to an author's college application materials.

Academic Standards

The best way to judge the quality of the history essays we have published is to read several of the issues of the journal. We have published essays of fewer than 4,000 words, but we also receive and have published essays of 21,000 words. The average is about 5,500 words, with Turabian (Chicago) endnotes and bibliography. We advise that the author should prepare with considerable reading on the topic and that the essay go through at least one draft before it is polished and proofread for submission. We have not yet received essays from history students at all of the perhaps 40,000 eligible secondary schools around the world, but there is already a high level of international competition, and we have published essays from 35 countries so far.