FFRF announces 2026 high school essay winners

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is proud to announce the 12 winners and 10 honorable mentions in the 2026 William Schulz High School Essay Contest. FFRF has awarded $19,450 in scholarship money for this year’s contest!

College-bound high school seniors were asked to write a personal persuasive essay based on this prompt: “My favorite freethought/humanist hero/ine. Write a personal essay about your favorite freethinker or humanist and what they did or are doing to improve or enrich our lives.”

FFRF awarded 12 top prizes and 12 honorable mentions. (FFRF seeks to distribute essay scholarship monies to a higher number of students, so ties — such as fifth place in this contest — are not regarded in the typical tie fashion, where, in this instance, sixth place would be skipped.)

Winners are listed below and include the college or university they are now attending and the award amount.

FIRST PLACE

Luotong Wong, UC-Berkeley, $3,500.

SECOND PLACE

Jacob McBride, Saint Joseph’s University, $3,000.

THIRD PLACE

Isabella Fitch, University of Vermont, $2,500

FOURTH PLACE

Sydney Anker, Azusa Pacific, $2,000.

FIFTH PLACE (tie)

Naija Zamora-Johnson, University of Houston, $1,500.

Noah Bouchard, Cal Poly State San Luis Obispo, $1,500.

SIXTH PLACE

Jasper Koneshwaran, UBC Okanagan, $1,000.

SEVENTH PLACE

Nora Vandeloecht, Washington University, $750.

EIGHTH PLACE (tie)

Emmett Palmer, University of Washington, $500.

Rotimi Esiso, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, $500.

NINTH PLACE

Ariadna Garcia, University of Houston, $400.

TENTH PLACE

Mason Sitts, College of the Redwoods, $300.

HONORABLE MENTIONS ($200 each)

Vanessa Apostolakos, University Of Southern Indiana

Jazlyn Brown, Clark Atlanta University

Anna Mae Corrigan, Oregon State University

Ela Ekinci, Virginia Tech

Donna Lee, USC

Maya Maizland

Ranna Shpoon, University of Central Florida

Samuel Slepack, UNLV

Aayah Vickers, Virginia Tech

Ruby Wagner, Bowling Green University

The high school contest is named for the late William J. Schulz, a Wisconsin member and lifelong learner who died at 57 and left a generous bequest to FFRF.

FFRF thanks FFRF’s Lisa Treu for managing the many details of this and FFRF’s other annual student competitions. And we couldn’t judge these contests without our volunteer and staff readers and judges, including:  Dan Barker, Anita Barrett, Anne Bendixen, Bri Deyo, Elizabeth Engelhardt, Wrenna Fine, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Richard Grimes, Ricki Grunberg, Susan Haines, Tracy Hoffman, Robert Holley, Sammi Lawrence, Robert Leonhard, Katya Maes, David Malcolm, Tori Mizerak, Barbara Nolta, Charles Riedesel, Roe Mary Sheldon, PJ Slinger and Michelle Smith.

FFRF has offered essay competitions to college students since 1979, high school students since 1994, grad students since 2010 and one now called “first in the family,” since 2016. A fifth contest, open to law students, began in 2019.