<p>Ok I'm a white male high school senior in Arizona. My school is public and scores among the top in the state. I'm looking into schools with strong math programs such as UChicago, and my safety will be Arizona State (Barrett Honors College hopefully).</p>
<p>SAT (not so good): CR 670/ MATH 690/ WRITING 640/ TOTAL 2000
ACT (good): E 30/ M 33(without calculator)/ R 36/ S 35/ C 34</p>
<p>GPA: 4.3 W
Class Rank: 8/650 or so (Top 2%)</p>
<p>AP Classes: AP US History-5, AP English Lang-4, AP Physics B-3, took AP Spanish, but class didn't prepare us enough to take the AP test (Those who did got 1's).</p>
<p>Taking senior year AP Biology, AP Statistics, AP English Lit, AP Calculus BC, AP Government/Economics, AP Environmental Science</p>
<p>ECs (Not sure how good these are):
-Won Chess State Championship Sophomore year, Region Champion Freshman and Junior years. US Amateur Co-Champ a few years back.
-Give private chess lessons. (Gotta make money somehow)
-Former member of US Chess Federation Publications Committee
-Member of Math Club
-Not much Community Service or anything like that. I'm mainly focused on my chess. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.</p>
<p>So what are my chances of getting into a strong math school like UChicago? Also does it matter that I didn't do very strong on my SATs if I did well on my ACT?</p>
<p>UChicago=Reach. Of course, UofC looks a lot at whether you're a match for their school, which will mainly be shown through your essays (they have extremely quirky topics and you'll want to give semi-quirky answers). Good luck though!</p>
<p>I don't understand why I struggled on the SAT. I breezed through Honors Pre-Calculus last year, which at my school had a huge dropout rate. Other people who didn't do as well in the class where able to get 700+ in Math. I absolutely love math and it is my best subject. Would my 33 on the ACT negate my 690 on the SAT? I feel like I would have easily scored a 36 on the ACT with a calculator, but I'm afraid to take it again as I'm not sure whether I could score the same in Reading.</p>
<p>Yeah I'll definitely take the level 2 Math Subject Test. Hopefully I'll get a really high score. I'm also banking on the fact that Arizona isn't a very competitive state. We didn't have any Ivies at my school last year.</p>
<p>Your ECs aren't that strong. Your test scores and transcript make you a competitive applicant and you will be granted leeway considering you're from Ariziona. Yet still, those ECs don't show a lot of achievement. Uof C is a reach depending on your essays.</p>
<p>Also, there are certain schools that will reward you for your chess (offer scholarships). If you are from the US Chess Publications board, you probably know that just a few months ago they published on article on exactly this.</p>
<p>As I recall, the Univ of Texas at Dallas gives a few full 4-year scholarships to members of their chess team. I think UNC and Florida offers small scholarships. </p>
<p>Write the Chess Life publications group and see if they can find the article and send it to you.</p>
<p>As far as schools--you may not want to go to some of these schools that give chess scholarships since they aren't up to the level of some of the schools you can get into with your GPA and test scores. And even if you do decide to do so, keep in mind that you'll need to drop chess and focus on studies if you want to do well in college.</p>
<p>P.S. Some of the top players in the US--like Joel Benjamin and Gata Kamsky gave up chess for 4 or 5 years to go to college and law school. Both later went back and became top players again. Yet they both suggested the same thing--avoid chess in school as much as possible--since it becomes too distracting.</p>
<p>Yeah I know about the schools that offer chess scholarships. None of them are very good unfortunately and most of them offer very little money. UMBC and UTD are the heavy hitters, but the schools themselves don't entice me.</p>