Essays will be distributed to a panel of judges for evaluation. No teacher who has a student participating will be allowed to judge essays.

• Essays are judged at the Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Native Speaker levels. Heritage students are judged separately at the Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced levels. All students whose essays receive Gold, Silver, Bronze, or Honorable Mention receive certificates. Gold, Silver, and Bronze essays also receive ACTR medals.
  
  
• No Awards are assigned to essays of less than five comprehensible Russian sentences or to essays with inappropriate content.
  
  
• Second Round Judging - New for 2025:  Gold-medal essays at the Advanced, Advanced Heritage, and Native Speaker levels will be  forwarded to a native Russian-speaking judge at KazNU (Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan) for a second round evaluation.  Writers of second-round essays that are awarded gold medals typically receive certificates and pins, while writers of silver and bronze medal essays receive certificates.
  
  
• NREC Co-chairs will have final say on appropriate level placement and awards in the event of any discrepancy.