This stolen shamelessly from yahoo.com
Thought it was pretty cool. Seems rare to give college scholarships in the US for intellectual
persuits, glad to see it happening.
And if there are any players here at that "getting ready to go to college" age.....
Colleges turn to recruiting chess players with scholarships to enhance schools' image
Sat Apr 6, 2:45 AM ET
By SABRA AYRES, Associated Press Writer
MIAMI - Move over, football and basketball stars. Now chess players are also being offered
scholarships as American colleges look to world-class chess play to try to enhance their public
image.
Seven years ago, two state universities — the Dallas campus of the University of Texas and the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County — were alone in actively recruiting chess players as a way
to boost their academic reputations.
Now, as many as 15 colleges and universities have followed suit in offering chess scholarships, said
Frank Niro, the executive director of the U.S. Chess Federation, which is headquartered in New
Windsor, New York.
"Recruiting is good for schools because chess players are bright," Niro said. "It automatically brings
good students to the schools."
Yuri Shulman, a graduate student in business administration at Texas-Dallas, and Alex Woitkevich,
a modern languages student from Maryland-Baltimore County, are among those who were
recruited. They will meet this weekend in the national collegiate chess championship.
The so-called Final Four (news - web sites) of Chess, which also includes players from Stanford and
Harvard, is scheduled for Miami's World Chess Hall of Fame and Sidney Samole Chess Museum.
Both Texas-Dallas and Maryland-Baltimore County began in the 1960s as mid-size research
campuses and technology training grounds. In the past decade, organized chess took on a more
critical role in campus life.
"Chess is a way of making a name for a strong university that doesn't have a 300- or 400-year
history like Harvard," said Tim Redman, the director of Texas-Dallas' chess program since 1996.
Unlike athletic recruiters who often travel across the country to find their players, Alexiy Root, the
recruiter for Texas-Dallas, said he and Redman visit scholastic chess competitions across Texas
and award scholarships to the winners.
This year, such scholarships were valued at dlrs 19,000 a year for in-state students and dlrs 43,000
for out-of-state students.
"The stereotypical chess player is bright, gets high SAT scores and can go to Harvard," Root said.
"We want to steal those top students considering Harvard and Yale. Chess is a great enticement for
getting them to look at our school."
Root finds his other recruits through word of mouth and, more often, e-mails from chess players
worldwide who have heard of his team's accomplishments.
Shulman, a 26-year-old grand master from Belarus, heard about American universities giving chess
scholarships while he was coaching at a 1998 international chess competition in New York.
Shulman said he first approached Alan Sherman, the faculty adviser for Maryland-Baltimore
County's team, but was told the school was not then offering scholarships to foreign students.
So Sherman referred Shulman to Texas-Dallas' program. He was accepted with a scholarship worth
eight semesters of tuition, plus room and board.
In return, Texas-Dallas got its first grand master.
Texas now gives about 10 full chess-related scholarships a year, with more than half of the chess
team benefiting. Many of the other players are on academic scholarships.
The recruiting has led Texas-Dallas and Maryland-Baltimore County into a fierce chess rivalry, said
Al Lawrence, the chess museum's executive director. Harvard and Stanford aren't expected to pose
much of a challenge, he said.
Sherman said Texas-Dallas' recruiting is based on methods used by Maryland-Baltimore County
since 1995.
Sherman's school also gives scholarships to high school chess players and now recruits international
students for the team. Woitkevich, who has been awarded about dlrs 60,000, is from Poland.
The recruiting has had a direct effect the team and the school, Sherman said.
In 1995, Maryland-Baltimore County was ranked 25th out of 26 collegiate chess teams. Since then,
it has won the Pan American tournament three times, and twice tied with Texas-Dallas for first.
"Chess embodies our value that being smart is cool," Sherman said.
It may be good for chess,and it may be promotion for the schools but Iseriously doubt about the value in general.
Statements like "Recruiting is good for schools because chess players are bright," are cheap. It may be true on average that "GOOD
chess players" are bright in some respect, and even that would only relate to a small part of human brightness, by the way, the part that
can be automated (Fritz, deep blue....). How intelligent, and how valuable for the society (business, science, culture, ...)! Yes, for sports
and/or art if you like.