@averagewhiteguy I am currently myself a junior with 2050 USCF, and 2500 on lichess. I think your goal of becoming a national master is way too ambitious. 1800 on lichess puts you realistically around 1400-1500. Getting to over 2000 in difficult in itself, and to go beyond expert level is extremely different. Suggestions to improve rapidly = youtube + ICC + chessgames website + chesstempo website.
As for the purpose of this thread, I would say chess is an extremely unique extracurricular - don’t let non-chess players try to downplay you because they obviously haven’t a clue what they are talking about. Compared to all these other activities like debate, math team, etc, it is much harder to reach the national level as I’m sure you have started very young. I myself placed 8th nationally for 9th graders a couple years ago, and to the maker of this thread- I did basically the exact same thing lol. Freshman year there were only a couple kids, and I also became team captain and really helped expand our high school chess team - we are even going to nationals this year together. I hope you get into your dream schools - I myself am thinking of applying to princeton next school year.
One of the things that I think makes my chess achievements even more impressive is that I didn’t start playing chess until 9th grade. All the good payers I know started very young, and most of them were very impressed by my improvement, since I improved very quickly. Unfortunately though, I know that this seriously hurts my chances of getting IM/GM rated because almost all of them start 5-10 years old. Anyways, thanks for the input. Also while becoming master quickly is difficult, if he just means that he would eventually like to be one, I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable, especially if he’s willing to study quite a bit. I would recommend basically the same things as you. I think that playing live time control games (over 15 minutes) is very good at helping you improve, especially until ~1800. Also, consider learning a single set of openings you use at tournaments, so that you get familiar positions and never lose out of the opening.
As far as exact advice, I don’t really know how good you are, but if your endgames are not great, consider watching Peter Laliç’s endgame course on YouTube. Also there’s an online chessbase if you search for it, and that’s good for going over opening lines, but you need to learn the ideas behind them too, so as Shoshonte said earlier, a coach would definitely help a lot. I wish I had a coach. Maybe at Princeton! Let’s try to keep these comments on topic though, so we don’t get the thread moderated.
Thank you all for your input. Maybe I’ll get to meet some of you one day. I am thrilled to be accepted.