As we prepare for the Spring Journalism Contest, we wanted to break down how school classifications are determined for contests.
The Fall Yearbook Contest and Spring Journalism Contest are distinguished by three major size classifications–small (Class A), medium (Class B), and large schools (Class C). There are two main factors to achieve similar-sized competition pools: School Enrollment and Number of Contest Entries.
Let’s break it down a little further for these two factors.
School Enrollment
When school’s submit their contest entry payment (or IHSPA dues), there is a spot for advisers to indicate their 9-12 official school enrollment. This is where we typically pull enrollment numbers from.
If advisers don’t indicate their enrollment numbers on the form OR don’t submit payment until after the judging period has started, IHSPA will verify enrollment online while also taking the school’s previous years enrollment number into consideration.
For example, let’s say we didn’t have Iowa City West’s enrollment number via the form. First, we’ll look up their enrollment number on U.S. News & World Report and it’ll tell us their 9-12 enrollment is 1,472 students. We’ll then look at their previous year’s enrollment via the form, which was 1502. This allows us to gauge West High’s enrollment number to be around 1500 students when breaking the schools into different classes.
Number of Contest Entries
Our second factor when breaking schools into the three different classifications is the number of contest entries that schools submit. Our goal is to have similar-sized competition pools, so we’ll keep track of how many entries each school submits to further assign classifications.
For example, our 2025 Spring Journalism Contest had 1,754 entries submitted, so we would want each classification to have roughly 585 total entries. Of course, the classifications aren’t going to be exactly 585 given that some schools will submit more entries than others, but our goal is to make them as close to even as possible.
Typically, the number of entries a school submits aligns with their school enrollment number. So, if we split the schools into the classifications solely based on their enrollment and not taking the entries into consideration, the classifications would still have roughly an evenly split amount of entries.
Other Factors to Consider
Classifications can change contest to contest, which is why there isn’t a strict cut off for class classifications. Another factor to consider for this is changes in participation, either in the number of schools participating or the number of entries that schools are submitting. For example, if we have an increase in smaller schools (Class A schools) participating in the Fall Contest, that could lead to a few schools on the higher enrollment end of Class A to be moved to Class B, depending on entry amounts.
Classifications can also change based on if it’s the Fall Contest or Spring Contest. The Spring Contest has historically had more entries submitted (1754 for Spring 2025) than the Fall Contest (1575 for Fall 2025), so that will also effect which class schools are in.
Overall, the best way for us to ensure we have the most accurate numbers when assigning classes, is to submit your enrollment numbers when paying for your contest entries before the contest closes.
