Our Year 11 student, Esha has won an essay competition and was awarded a partial scholarship from Immerse Education to join their 2023 English Literature Summer School at Cambridge, one of 24 prestigious universities in the Russell Group.

Esha’s entry into the Immerse Education Essay Competition was picked from over 10,000 student’s work from across the globe. Her writing on literary features was described as, ‘an elegant argument in favour of the metaphor’.

Esha says:

As my HIP challenge this term, I really wanted to engage in something for English, so when I read through the challenge list, I immediately was drawn to the Immerse Essay Competition. Looking at the videos and stories of the past successes of students from around the world was inspiring, and the large range of questions available meant that I could write about a topic that intrigued me. Subsequently, I chose the question, ‘Which literary features do you find to be the most powerful and why?’

Although the question was an open one, I quickly decided to choose the metaphor as the most powerful literary device and went on to include two examples: fire in the Latin novel ‘Echo et Narcissus’, and sickness and healing in the Shakespearean play ‘Macbeth’ (English). As the word limit was only five hundred words, I struggled to condense my essay at first, and in the process went through many drafts. The bibliography and footnotes in the style of the Oxford referencing guide took very long to construct, yet I knew learning this type of essay formatting would be useful in the future. Overall, I really enjoyed writing it.

About a month after submitting the essay, I was sent an email. I had been selected to receive a scholarship to the English Literature Summer School at Cambridge University! Over the whole of January I had been checking my emails constantly awaiting a response, so upon receiving this news I was so excited and thrilled to know that my work had paid off. I would undoubtedly encourage anyone in Senior School to enter next year!

I would like to thank my teachers Mrs Williams and Ms Ahmed for their guidance and direction.

Oxford and Cambridge University Summer Schools welcome ambitious and motivated students. This is an opportunity to gain valuable insights into university life, learn to prepare for the future and to study alongside peers from around the globe. Students thrive through one-on-one tutorials from expert university tutors.