The New York Times Connections Contest invites high school students to submit short essays that make a connection between a piece of academic content and something recently published in the NYT.
WHEN TO ENTER: December 5, 2019–January 21, 2020
WHO CAN ENTER: high school students ages 13–19
GUIDELINES:
1. Choose some piece of academic content: something you’ve been reading, discussing or learning about in school.
It may be a work of literature, an event in history, a concept in civics, a phenomenon in science or something else entirely. It can be as small as a single haiku or as large as a world-changing event like the Industrial Revolution.
2. Find something published in The New York Times anytime in 2019 or 2020 that you think connects to your chosen subject in some interesting, meaningful way, and explain how.
You can pick any article, Op-Ed, image, video, graphic or podcast, or anything else you like, as long as it was published in The Times in 2019 or 2020.
3. Tell us, in 450 words or fewer, how and why the two things connect.
4. Create something original.
For this contest, you cannot submit anything you have already published, whether in a school newspaper or elsewhere. Be careful not to plagiarize.
5. The work you send in should be appropriate for a Times audience.
Please remember to keep your audience in mind. You’re writing for a family newspaper, so, for example, curse words are out.
6. Submit only one entry for this contest.
Submissions will be disqualified if we discover you have sent in more than one entry.
7. You can work alone or in a pair.
If you’re working with a partner, one student will have to be the primary contact.
8. We will use this rubric (PDF) to judge entries.
Your work will be judged by Times journalists as well as by Learning Network staff members and educators from around the United States.