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<p>It will give you money if you get accepted ($2k w/o FA, $1k w/ FA), but I doubt being a finalist will help, since Chicago already has your SAT scores.</p>
<p>Matches for you could include some rather good schools, like Duke or Northwestern, that don’t care that much about the essays. Since Chicago cares a lot about the essays, you will have a slight advantage to other candidates due to your SAT scores, but by no means will you get accepted unless you can prove that you can write well and have extraordinary ideas. The essay prompts at Chicago aren’t meant to test your writing ability per se; they want to see your ideas so that they can assess whether you will be a fit here.</p>