Does anybody have stats on how many of the UTD and UMBC scholarships awarded at Nationals are actually used by the winners?
Do you mean used for all 4 years?? AFter all it is not unheard of for someone to drop out of college.
Sometimes the winners are awfully young. Andrew Zheng, a 2100 rated fifth grader won the UMBC scholarship this year. I guess it will take a couple of years to see if he will accept his prize that is valued at over $35, 000. It would be difficult to find out if the whole scholarship was used regarding the other question because there are privacy issues involving school records. I’m not certain of this but I think at least one winner of the UMBC scholarship turned it down to go to a more “prestigious” university.
Andrew won the Maryland sweet 16 this year that is only available to Maryland residents. The winner of this does get a scholarship to UMBC and the recent history of this scholarship is that most of the winners choose to attend different schools.
The question that started this thread referred to the winners of the USCF National tournaments.
Mike Regan
I was curious how effective these offers are in getting students to attend those schools.
I had one particular private student who loved chess and was extremely good at it. He was also very good at academics. This young man earned a 4-year chess scholarship. When it came to apply for colleges, he submitted only two applications: the chess scholarship school and MIT. He was accepted at both, and (after a little hesitation) went to MIT.
I suspect this story is fairly common (except the part about applying to only two colleges).
Michael Aigner
When Shimer actively promoted its scholarships (and had one more than today) it helped encourage Jesse Kraai (then a 2300) to attend there, along with Kevin Gensler, who was a high expert.