The Real Process of Getting Recognition
Most students enter this competition because they want a certificate or a line on their college application. The ones who actually place tend to treat it like a serious portfolio opportunity instead. I ran a writing workshop at a public high school for several years and watched kids submit work that was technically competent but completely forgettable. The judges see thousands of entries. Being forgettable is the default state. The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards runs on a tiered judging system. You submit locally, your portfolio gets reviewed by regional judges, and standout work moves forward to national-level evaluation. The categories are specific and strict. You cannot just write a story and submit it under "Literature" without checking whether it belongs in short story, personal essay, verse, or creative nonfiction. The category choice itself can make or break your submission.
How To Win Scholastic Art And Writing Awards
Before I get into the mechanics, there is one thing people consistently get wrong about the process. They focus on the work itself and completely ignore the artist statement. The artist statement is a real part of the judging criteria. Judges read it. They note whether the student can articulate what they are trying to do with their work. A vague statement like "I like writing about feelings" will not survive contact with experienced evaluators. The statement needs to describe your creative process, your interests, and the specific decisions you made in this body of work. For the visual art side, the same principle applies. I had a student once who submitted incredibly technically skilled drawings but wrote a statement that was basically a list of art classes they had taken. The work deserved more attention than the statement indicated. We spent an afternoon revising it to connect her technical choices to her actual interests in light and shadow, and she moved from a local honor to a regional gold key. That is a realistic example of how much the framing matters. The entry guidelines change slightly from year to year, so always check the official Scholastic website for the current deadline schedule and category descriptions. You typically need to submit through your school or a registered art organization. There is no direct individual submission path for most students. The deadlines are usually in January for the regular cycle, with some regional variations. Missing the deadline because you assumed your school would handle it is a common failure point.
What Judges Actually Look For
The awards use a rubric that evaluates originality, technical skill, and power of expression. Those terms mean something specific in this context. Originality does not mean picking an unusual topic. It means your work demonstrates a distinct creative voice. Judges can tell when a piece is following a template versus when someone actually thought about what they were doing. Technical skill is straightforward. Power of expression is the hardest to teach and the hardest to fake. I learned this the hard way with a photography student who submitted technically perfect images of landscapes. Every shot was well-exposed and properly composed. They were also indistinguishable from the tens of thousands of similar competition entries judges see. There was no point of view. We went back and re-shot the same locations, but this time the goal was to capture something the viewer could not easily explain. It took longer. The results were messier technically but far more compelling, and those images placed at the regional level. For writers, the counter-intuitive truth is that overwriting is the biggest killer of submissions. Students think ambitious vocabulary and complex sentence structures read as sophisticated. They usually read as insecure. A clean short story with a strong voice and a clear emotional arc will almost always outperform a purple-prose piece that is trying to impress. The judges are reading hundreds of entries in a single sitting. Clarity cuts through fatigue. Confusion buries work.
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Practical Steps for Your Submission
Start early. The work you submit should feel like it could have been improved by two more weeks of attention. Give yourself at least six to eight weeks from initial concept to final submission. If you are working on a long piece of writing, cut it before you think you need to cut it. Most student short stories are fifteen to twenty percent too long. The extra pages are usually padded scenes that do not advance the narrative or develop character. Get real feedback before you submit. Not generic praise from family members. You need someone who will tell you what is not working. A teacher, a workshop leader, or a peer group that understands craft. I typically recommend at least two rounds of revision after you receive feedback. The first revision fixes obvious problems. The second revision fixes problems you discovered after the first round. Pay attention to the formatting requirements for each category. Literary submissions usually require a specific file format and word count range. Visual art submissions have strict size and media guidelines. If you do not follow the formatting rules, your work can be disqualified regardless of quality. This happens every year. I have seen solid portfolios removed from consideration because someone attached a PDF when the guidelines called for JPG files.
Submit multiple pieces if the category allows it. A single piece gives judges one data point. A small collection demonstrates range and consistency. For writing, three to five pieces within a single category is usually the sweet spot. For visual art, ten to twelve pieces that show different approaches to the same theme tend to work well. The theme does not need to be obvious to the reader. It just needs to give the body of work cohesion.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Submitting work that was previously published or entered elsewhere can create problems. Check the current rules carefully. Some categories allow previously published work. Others require unpublished pieces. This changes between years and categories. Assuming your old submission is fine without verifying the current guidelines is a risk that is not worth taking. Another mistake is entering the wrong category based on what sounds prestigious. "Novel in progress" sounds more impressive than "short story," but if your novel excerpt has pacing problems that a shorter piece would not have, you are better off submitting the short story. The judges will still notice the pacing problems, and now you have fewer pages to save yourself. Do not rush the application materials at the end. Typos in your artist statement, incorrect birth dates, missing signatures on parental consent forms. I have seen these reject entries. The work is good. The application is sloppy. The entry goes nowhere. Take the final hour to proofread everything before you hit submit.
The most important thing you can do is make work that is genuinely yours. The competition is saturated with technically proficient entries that sound like everything else. A distinct voice, even an imperfect one, stands out. That is what places work. That is what gets noticed after the initial screening rounds are over.
