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I found this while browsing Digg this evening
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I looked at this three or four years ago and tried to reflect on when I was applying to University. I believe I would have potentially been faced with going to Cambridge and amassing debts in excess of £30,000 or going to Texas and possibly making a profit. I suspect as an eighteen year old I wouldn't have appreciated the opportunities that the States offered, but with the benefit of experience the States are very attractive.
I would love to see a British junior get a chess scholarship to a US university, because it could have a big impact on how chess is viewed within key demographic groupings. Basically, we are talking about reaching 2500 standard at 18 being worth £40,000 (if you wish to pursue an academic path with chess continuing to be an important element).
There are lots of issues to mull over here, but I would say if you are a really good 12 or 13 year old player it is worth understanding the opportunities that exist and the sacrifices that you might need to make to achieve these objectives.
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One recent former junior member of Dunbar Chess Club is MIT bound in the autumn and a current junior member has been accepted, subject to Higher results this year, for MIT - both enrolled through the Sutton Trust. They don't have the 2500 rating, alas, but will enjoy US College chess opportunities.
Two Dunbar Grammar School leavers this year are off to Abertay University to study Sports Science and on hearing this, it did strike me that there might be a role for chess in that area ... some day! Have we got any sports science academics in the chess-playing community?
Might they be interested to investigate, say the likes of the Agdestein set-up in Norway, where, as I understand it, he takes football and chess classes within a recognised advanced academic context? There may also be other western European examples and there are certainly sports science degree courses, in which chess can be a major, in Russia.
At secondary school level, I wonder whether the very highly-regarded (Dresden) Sports-Gymnasium (a regional centre for sports excellence) still has chess as one of its ten or so primary options (yes, it was alongside the likes of football and athletics). It allows students (which included Elisabeth Paehtz) to major in chess sport (yes, it is considered uncontroversially thus in German Saxony) to German Abitur level, alongside the requisite clutch of "normal" academic subjects.
This latter course was led by an Eastern European sports graduate (and IM), who was clearly outstanding in his field (I recall that his course was outlined in great detail some years ago in "Schach Magazin 64").
Is there any suitably qualified sports-academic who might be keen to take some further steps in the above general directions?
