Student Essay Awards

2011 Helen H. Glaser Student Essay Awards

Purpose
Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society instituted this competition to encourage medical students to write creative narratives or scholarly essays relevant to medicine.

Prizes
$2000 first, $750 second, $500 third, and honorable mention awards of $250 each. Prizes will be paid after the receipt of required documentation (see Requirements for Winning Essays, below).

Eligibility
Authors must be enrolled at medical schools with active AΩA chapters (Class of 2011 or later), but need not be members of AΩA. Only one entry may be submitted by each student.

Dates
Entries may be sent by online form, e-mail (info@alphaomegaalpha.org), or USPS or courier and must be received or postmarked no later than January 31, 2011. Winners will be announced no later than May 1, 2011.

Requirements for Winning Essays

1. Essays must be written during the 2010/2011 academic year, must be the work of a single author, and must represent original work.
2. The essay may be on any nontechnical subject related to medicine, including ethics, history, education, philosophy, and policy. Well-referenced, scholarly fiction is an acceptable genre, as is creative narrative from personal experience.
3. The essay must not exceed 15 double-spaced pages of 12-point type with minimum 1-inch margins, exclusive of reference listing.
4. Unique references, numbered consecutively, are limited to 20. (Reference citation of web sites is not acceptable unless a site is the sole source of the information or has official academic credentials. Examples of acceptable sites are official government web pages such as that of the National Institutes of Health.)
5. The paper must not have been offered to or published by any other journal or entered in any other contest and must be submitted to The Pharos, the official publication of AΩA, which has the right of first refusal.
6. A front page is required with the author's full name, address, phone number, e-mail, name of medical school and year of graduation, and essay title. The author's name and essay title must be on each page, and all pages must be numbered. If sent by mail or courier, four stapled single-sided sets of the essay should be sent to:
   Alpha Omega Alpha Student Essay Competition
   525 Middlefield Road, Suite 130
   Menlo Park, California 94025
   
7. A committee of the editorial board of The Pharos will review the essays and select the winners. Judging will be on the basis of originality, scholarship, style and composition, and relevance.

Requirements for Winning Essays
When notified of award receipt, authors of all winning papers must provide documentation of references in photocopy as follows: title pages of all books cited; the first and last pages of book chapters cited; the table of contents of the particular issue of the journal in which a cited article appeared; all quotations, from the primary sources, including page numbers. The author's Social Security number will be required for payment of the award.

Essays Not Receiving an Award
Essays may be revised and submitted for standard review for publication in The Pharos. Papers not accepted for The Pharos but published elsewhere should include the following acknowledgment: Submitted as an entry in the 2011 Alpha Omega Alpha Student Essay Competition.

More Information
Contact Managing Editor Debbie Lancaster at (650) 329-0291 or d.lancaster@alphaomegaalpha.org.
Sample Student Essays and Poetry (PDF)

Download the form (MS Word Document)

Online Submission
Submit an Essay for Consideration