2025-2026 competition

Patriot's Pen and Voice of Democracy

• Application Deadline - October 31, 2025
• Eligibility: Must be lawful US permanent residents or have applied for permanent residence (for which the application has not been denied) and intend to become a US citizen at the earliest opportunity.

Patriot's Pen:

• Open to 6th, 7th and 8th grade students who enroll by Oct 31st.
• Submit a 300-400 word essay about "How are you showing patriotism and support for our country?"
• National Prize is currently $5,000

Voice of Democracy:

• Open to students in grades 9-12 enrolled by Oct 31st deadline
• Submit a 3-5 minute audio and written essay about 
• "How are you showing patriotism and support for our country?"
• National Prize is currently $35,000

HOW TO ACCESS THE PLATFORM

A whitelist or allowlist is a list or register of entities that are being provided a particular privilege, service, mobility, access or recognition. Entities on the list will be accepted, approved and/or recognized. Institutions that want to work with Scholar's App must whitelist the following domain: *.scholarsapp.com/* - each institution can do so by reaching out to their IT department or IT manager.

We are working on gaining an allowlist status with your State Department of Education, but if you're unable to access the platform, please use your personal device at home or on a public network to apply.

SECURITY POLICY

Scholar's App set of security features:

• ScholarsApp complies with the SOC 2 Type II standard for security and offers a GDPR-compliant data processing agreement (DPA).
• Advanced DDoS protection - ScholarsApp combines in-house security systems with Cloudflare to block attacks.
• Vulnerability testing - ScholarsApp uses automated code testing, vulnerability testing (including OWASP Top 10), and continuous monitoring technologies.
• Penetration tested - ScholarsApp conducts pen tests annually (at minimum) following the comprehensive OWASP WSTG.
• State-of-the-art encryption - Your data is safeguarded in transit with TLS and at rest through RDS AES-256.
• Secured with AWS - ScholarsApp is built on AWS, which supports 143 security standards and compliance certifications.

PRIVACY POLICY

Scholar's App is CPA (Consumer Privacy Act) compliant whereby the consumer has the right to limit use and disclosure of sensitive personal information. CPA provides personal information rights and protections for consumers, defined as natural persons. Scholar's App is compliant on not disclosing personal information to a third party for monetary consideration meaning we do not sell your personal information to third parties. CPA gives consumers the right to know what personal information Scholar's App are collecting and how that information is being used.

Scholar's App have two legal responsibilities toward consumers: they must inform consumers in advance regarding data collection and respond to a consumer's request to know what has been collected.

Inform Consumers

Scholar's App has posted our CPA-compliant privacy notice here: https://privacy.scholarsapp.com/privacy-policy and provides consumers what categories of personal information are being collected and for what purposes.

Consumer Request

Consumers can submit a request to know what personal information Scholar's App has collected from them. For a 12-month period preceding the request, Scholar's App must disclose the category of personal information it has collected, categories of sources, business or commercial purpose for collecting information, categories of third parties that Scholar's App shares personal information, and the specific pieces of personal information it has collected about that consumer. Scholar's App must provide this information free of charge, but only after verifying that the consumer is who they say they are.