Iris Chang

                              2007   

This year, we received a total of 270 essays, among which 150 essays (56% of the total) were from the United States, and  the rest came from around the globe, including Australia, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sweden and United Kingdom.   We were very encouraged that 102 essays, constituting 38% of the total entries, came from China.

Thirty seven of the fifty states of the U. S. had at least one essay submission.  Like last year, California, again, is the state that has the highest number of contest entries.  The essays by the native Chinese were  from 22 provinces, 4 municipalities and 2 autonomous regions.   

Among the 270 contestants, there are 208 students (77%) - 27 university graduate students, 108 college students, 71 high school students and 2 middle school students. Other participants are from different fields including education (teachers, instructors and professors), the airline industry, business, engineering, home making, law, law enforcement, medicine, news media, real estate, sales, literature creation and translation etc.   While the backgrounds of the contestants are highly diverse, their age spans from early teens to 87!

Many of the essays were of exceptional quality.    It indeed was a rather challenging process to select the top prize winners as there were a large number of unique, insightful and distinguished writings.  The judges wished they could have granted prizes to all of them.