High school students in our Affiliate School Program are encouraged to participate in the prestigious David McCullough Essay Prizes competition.
The 2025 contest deadline is June 27, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. ET.
Image: David McCullough at Trinity School in Manhattan, October 15, 2019
$5000 1st Prizes
$1500 2nd Prizes
$500 3rd Prizes
This contest is named in memory of David McCullough (1933–2022)—a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and Gilder Lehrman Life Trustee—and honors his career telling America’s stories and examining its histories.
Submit your entry via our contest entry form, accessible via the button below. Submissions will be accepted through June 27, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. ET.
To assist students, teachers, and parents in their preparation, the Institute will host a Virtual Research Night aimed at supporting high school–level research. This program will be led by Professor Kenya Davis-Hayes from California Baptist University, a Scholar Judge for the prize, alongside staff from the Gilder Lehrman Institute. They will share valuable sources and strategies for effective research and writing.
Virtual Research Night will take place on February 6, 2025. Click here to register.
Students are invited to submit an interpretive essay focusing on close reading and analysis of one primary source from American history, 1491 to 2001, in the Gilder Lehrman Collection of more than 87,000 historical documents.
Image: Letter from Edward Carrington to Henry Knox, March 13, 1788. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC02437.03821)
Students are invited to submit a research essay incorporating primary and secondary sources on a topic in American history from 1491 to 2001.
Image: Edward George Renesch, Colored Man Is No Slacker, Chicago, 1918. (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC06134)
High school students attending schools in the Gilder Lehrman Affiliate School Program are eligible and encouraged to participate. They are invited to submit an original essay, written independently or for a current academic year class, that has been revised, expanded, and adapted to conform with the McCullough Prize specifications.
All participants will receive a certificate of participation suitable for framing. Prize winners in each of our two categories—research essays and interpretive essays—will receive cash awards as follows:
Papers should be submitted in 12-point, Times New Roman font with one-inch margins at the top, bottom, and sides. Essays should be free of teacher commentary or other notes.
The accepted document types are PDF, DOC, DOCX, and ODT.
Top essays have an introduction, body, and conclusion and a clearly stated, well-developed thesis statement with supportive historical evidence.
A panel of Gilder Lehrman master teachers will choose the pool of finalists, from which a jury of eminent historians will choose the winners. Essays will be evaluated for their historical rigor, the clarity and correctness of their style, their use of evidence, and their qualities of empathy and imagination.
We hold many rare copies of foundational American documents, like this first draft of the US Constitution
Discover 2,000+ individuals who lived through the American Revolution, like the poet Phillis Wheatley.
Bring history to life with visual sources, like this US War Department recruitment poster (ca. 1944–1945).
In addition to documents, the Collection includes objects, like this campaign button for Lyndon Johnson.
Our Collection highlights the contributions of many Americans, like those of a female pilot in the 1910s.
Explore the fight against slavery through abolitionist writings, like this note by Frederick Douglass.
Essays can be on any topic related to American history from 1491 to 2001. Essays in the interpretive category must feature a primary source (letter, broadside, art, political cartoon, speech, etc.) from the Gilder Lehrman Collection.
In 1991, Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman embarked on a mission to create one of the most important repositories of historical American documents in the country. Today, the Gilder Lehrman Collection contains 87,000+ items documenting the political, social, and economic history of the United States.
A panel of Gilder Lehrman master teachers selected the pool of finalists from 621 submissions, from which a jury of eminent historians selected the winners. A total of 252 schools participated in the 2024 competition from 38 US states, Washington DC, the US Virgin Islands, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, and North Macedonia. Essays were evaluated for their historical rigor, clarity, correctness of style, use of evidence, empathy, and imagination.