The Freedom From Religion Foundation is proud to announce the disbursal of $17,950 in scholarship money to the winners of the 2025 William Schulz High School Essay Contest.
College-bound high school seniors were asked to write a personal persuasive essay based on this prompt: “To do good is my religion. Write a first-person essay that asserts why ‘doing good’ is not dependent on religious belief.”
FFRF awarded 11 top prizes and 10 honorable mentions. (FFRF seeks to distribute essay scholarship monies to a higher number of students, so ties — such as eighth place in this contest — are not regarded in the typical tie fashion, where, in this instance, ninth place would be skipped.)
Winners are listed below, including the college or university they are currently attending and the award amount.
FIRST PLACE
Shaurya Bhartia, UC-Berkeley, $3,500.
SECOND PLACE
Benjamin Meerson, UC-Berkeley, $3,000.
THIRD PLACE
Ian Klimox, Yale, $2,500
FOURTH PLACE
Patrick Le Febvre, University of Connecticut, $2,000.
FIFTH PLACE
Alice Giambalvo, Texas A&M, $1,500.
SIXTH PLACE
Noelle Kim, California Institute of Technology, $1,000.
SEVENTH PLACE
Dong En Wu, Marquette University, $750.
EIGHTH PLACE (tie)
Kiera Robinson, Nova Southeastern University, $500.
Kennedy Cordle, North Carolina A&T State University, $500.
NINTH PLACE
Callum Wilford, University of Florida, $400.
TENTH PLACE
Chauntel Berry, Rochester Institute of Technology, $300.
HONORABLE MENTIONS ($200 each)
Isabella Cassells, Coastal Carolina University.
Ariana Delgado, University of Texas-El Paso.
Jayden Fernandez-Morales, University of California-Riverside.
Caleb Forehand, East Carolina University.
Anna Izquierdo, Colby College.
Jocelynn Malone, Heidelberg University (Ohio).
Eden Sterk, University of Florida.
Aliani Timmons, Carnegie Mellon University.
Sophia Wang, University of Florida.
Josiah Wiegrefe, Minnesota State University-Moorhead.
The high school contest is named for the late William J. Schulz, a Wisconsin member and lifelong learner who died at 57, leaving a generous bequest to FFRF.
FFRF warmly thanks FFRF’s Lisa Treu for managing the minute details of this and FFRF’s other annual student competitions. And we couldn’t judge these contests without the help of our volunteer and staff readers and judges.
FFRF has offered essay competitions to college students since 1979, high school students since 1994, grad students since 2010 and one dedicated to students of color since 2016. A fifth contest, open to law students, began in 2019.
Read the essays in the August issue of Freethought Today.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters of nontheism. With more than 42,000 members, FFRF advocates for freethinkers’ rights across the globe. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
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