Buckley Institute Announces 2025 National Undergraduate Essay Contest Winners
The Buckley Institute is pleased to announce the winners of our 2025 National Undergraduate Essay Contest.
This year, the second year of the national undergraduate essay contest, the Buckley Institute received over 60 submissions from students at colleges and universities around the country, coming from private, public, and community colleges.
Responding to a prompt on elitism and the breakdown in social trust in America, undergraduate writers talked about the role of social media, problems with modern journalism, the decline of local civic involvement, and even AI. Some related personal experiences, including family history and past experiences in journalism, while others looked at classical wisdom and the ideals of our nation’s founders.
Our first-place winner, Siddhu Pachipala, is a rising junior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying political science and mathematical economics. He looked at the modern elite in America, arguing that those chosen to lead in this country, including its critical institutions and organizations, hold the right credentials but have forgotten that leadership is a burden and a responsibility:
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This was Washington. Or New York. Or Cambridge. It didn’t matter much. The room looked the same: well-lit, over-credentialed, professionally concerned.
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The people we ask to lead should be educated in the limits of their own knowledge. They should be steeped in the traditions that gave rise to the world they now inherit: Burke, Madison, Tocqueville. They should understand that the common good is not a technocratic problem to be solved, but a responsibility to be shared.
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A democracy will always have its elites. But Buckley’s quip about the Boston phone book still lingers for a reason. He saw what happens when the class that leads forgets who it leads—and why.
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Read his full essay here.
Second-place winner Aneesh Swaminathan is a junior at Johns Hopkins University and a past winner of the national essay contest. He looked at how liberalism has hollowed out the “little platoons,” the cross-communal ties that bonded members of the public to one another:
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But instead, we found ourselves lonelier, angrier, and more polarized than ever before. Fragmented, not free. Controlled, not liberated. Is it then any surprise that we no longer trust the very institutions that helped sever those bonds?
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In third place, Duke University Senior Katelyn Cai wrote about how social media, declining social institutions, and ideologically segregated communities are the real drivers of declining social trust:
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Universities, urbanites, and partisans are not the enemy. Nor are elites. Our only true adversaries are the forces that convince us to fight one another, diverting our energy from the urgent task of revitalizing our social contract.
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Meet The 2025 National Undergraduate Essay Contest Winners
First Place: Siddhu Pachipala
Siddhu Pachipala is a rising junior at MIT studying political science and mathematical economics. At MIT GOV/LAB, he researches generative AI’s potential to foster healthier deliberation on contentious public issues. At MIT Concourse, he helps teach a fundamental questions seminar for first-year students. Mr. Pachipala worked in grassroots fundraising for the Harris-Walz campaign and developed precision mental health diagnostics honored by the American Psychological Association and CIA. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, and Newsweek.
Read his full essay here.
Second Place: Aneesh Swaminathan
Aneesh Swaminathan is a junior at Johns Hopkins University. Double majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology and Political Science, he combines a deep passion for science with a translational interest in politics and public policy. On campus, Aneesh is an advocate for intellectual diversity and civil dialogue. He founded the Johns Hopkins Political Union and serves as President of the College Republicans. He aspires to a career in medicine with a focus on health policy.
Read his full essay here.
Third Place: Katelyn Cai
A senior at Duke University, Katelyn Cai is studying a self-designed major on Social and Public Trust in the Digital Age. She’s a journalist with work for The Dispatch, The Assembly, Indy Week, and 9th Street Journal, and editor of Substack “Trust Issues.” On campus, she’s involved with Student Government, Experiential Orientation, and Defining Movement. Her accolades include: Robertson Scholar, Patman Fellow, AEI Summer Honors Academy Scholar, and Distinguished Young Woman of America. In her free time, she travels, tries new cafes, and dotes on her border collie.
Read her full essay here.